'SANDMAN

money and ler crops of t crops. On h and a few antiquity as

lave evolved Ie in regions 'op progeni­

ltions. There that is likely er-gathering perhaps for the gathering n a spiritual­ truk growing less the early duction, and )Ugh the back vidence from ,her scenarios correct, then ~ be/ore plant ; in the epipai­ I{orld to make What prompt­ arpoons, fish truro of hunt­ :entives. With mdwithmass e adjustments ivation would pical.

Chapter 3 WHAT IS A CROP?

The fountain whIch from He/Icon proceeds, That sacred stream should never water weeds, Nor make the crop of thorns and thistles grow.

Roscommon (Johnson, 1827)

"ccor lngs. c ting, J closel: lnvoh forest lamb. "crop harve: speak mon~

Crop I ambi~

It is not always easy to distinguish between wild and cultivated plants In South America, and there are many intermediate stages between the utilization of plants in their wild state and their true cultivation.

Levi-Strauss, 1950

ticate, of its tween often 1 Latin into t tic ate serve1 garde

ca liv to cal dered amoll whid more safe. Here ;

deriv, habit word

What is a Crop?

DEFINITIONS According to unabridged dictionaries, the word "crop" has several mean­ ings. One set of definitions involves the verbal form of the concepts of cut­ ting, mowing, grazing, lopping off branches, and so on. Sheep crop grass closely; a head of hair or a mane of a horse is cropped. Other definitions involve the material that is harvested, whether it be plant or animal. The forester may speak of a timber crop, the livestock man of a calf crop or a lamb crop. The material harvested is referred to as a "crop". In other cases, "crop" specifies certain kinds of plants that are grown on purpose for a later harvest. Even so it would be quite appropriate for an American Indian to speak of a "wild-rice crop" . Note that in the poem quoted above, Roscom­ mon speaks of a crop of thorns and thistles. This is probably not what the Crop Science Society of American had in mind when it adopted its name. It is perhaps appropriate that the term "crop" is broad and somewhat ambiguous because many of the plants we grow for food are not fully domes­ ticated and the word "crop" covers all that which is harvested regardless of its status as a domesticate. We must therefore make the distinction be­ tween "cultivated" and "domesticated" as clear as possible. The terms are often used synonymously but actually they have quite different implications. The words "domestication" and "to domesticate" are derived from the Latin domus, house, dwelling, household. To domesticate means to bring into the household. A domestic is a servant who lives in the house. A domes­ ticated plant or animal is one that has been brought into the household and serves those who also live there. The household, then, can include the home garden, barnyard, sty, fold, field, orchard, or ranch. The cattle tribes of Afri­ ca live by their domesticated animals, and their domuses move from camp to camp and from kraal to kraal. The overall grazing range may be consi­ dered a domain (derived from dominus, lord, not domus). In like manner, among Aborigines, the total foraging range may be called a domain, within which are more discrete hearth-based domuses (Chase, 1989). A domus is . more than space or territory; it is an area intimately known and spiritUally lafe. The imprint of man is upon it and the demons and spirits are benign. Here one can be "at home". Australian anthropologists, in particular, have been groping for words derived from domus to describe the interactions of Aborigines and their habitats. The word domiculture-household economy has been revived and words like domisticatory coined. This has been prompted by the concept that 63

CROPS AND MAN

WH

while the Aborigines did not domesticate any plants or aninials, they did domesticate the environment in which they live. The landscape can be thought of as being brought into the household. Rindos claimed that plants were domesticated be/ore agriculture as a result of long coevolution with man. In fact, he wrote: " ... the indehiscent rachis of the small grains is as much the cause as the result of agriculture." (Rindos, 1984, p. 139). The argument has little merit in view of the fact that wild grass seeds with fragile rachises can be harvested in commercial quanti­ ties and compete with domesticated cereals in the market place (Harlan, 1989). The concept, however, is interesting from the point of view of the meaning of domestication. The consensus, I believe, is that domestication involves genetic changes that adapt the plant or animal to the domus, and full domes­ tication results in populations that cannot survive without the aid of man. Cereals with indehiscent rachises and legumes with indehiscent pods are domesticated. The vegetation of "domesticated landscapes" can survive without the aid of man, but the modified landscapes cannot. And yet, some 35-40 000 yr of landscape domestication in Australia has not resulted in domesticated plants. Plants are clearly not domesticated before agriculture. The term should be used with more precision. Since domestication is an evolutionary process, there will be found all degrees of plant and animal association with man and a range of morpho­ logical differentiations from forms identical to wild races to fully domesti­ cated races. A fully domesticated plant or animal is completely dependent upon man for survival. Therefore, domestication implies a change in eco­ logical adaptation, and this is usually associated with morphological differen­ tiation. There are inevitably many intermediate states. To cultivate means to conduct those activities involved in caring for a plant, such as tilling the soil, preparing a seedbed, weeding, pruning, pro­ tecting, watering, and manuring. Cultivation is concerned with human ac­ tivities, while domestication deals with the genetic response of the plants or animals being tended or cultivated. It is therefore quite possible to cultivate wild plants, and cultivated plants are not necessarily domesticated. Harvested plant materials may be classified as wild, tolerated, en­ couraged, and domesticated. We have shown in Chapter 1 that a very large number of species has been harvested in the wild, not only by gatherers but by fully established cultivators as well. Examples of tolerated and encouraged plants will be given in the following section.

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san is ~ pee rna inti

soc thi: pr< pal rei: the ne'

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pa faJ tal Tl ov ve

INTERMEDIATE STATES

Levi-Strauss' (1950) observation on the distinction between wild and cul­ tivated plants (quoted on p. 62) need not have been restricted to South Ameri­ ca. Although the situation occurs generally in the tropics, it applies to many temperate crops as well. We shall examine below a few examples of inter­ mediate states between wild and domesticated. There is a class of plants that came to be closely associated with man, but without evident genetic modifications. One example is the baobab (Adan-

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