2. What is Food?
Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or
drink in order to maintain life and growth.
Nutrients/substances essential for the growth, repair,
and maintenance of body tissues and for the
regulation of vital processes
Scientifically Food is a matter (building materials) that
contains energy living things can use to live and grow
3. Importance
Human beings are the pre-requisite for a society, and
food is a pre-requisite for the existence of human
beings.
If any culture is to survive, it must develop strategies
and technologies for procuring or producing food
from its environment.
4. Environment and Food
Environment does not determine food getting patterns,
rather it provides broad limits on possible alternatives.
Specific mode of food getting is influenced by the interplay
of environment, People, and technology.
Environment can set the upper limit on the ultimate
productivity of any given food system and the population it
feeds. Cultural Ecologists call this limit as ‘Environment’s
Carrying Capacity’.
“It is the maximum number of people a given society can
support, given the available resources.”
optimal foraging theory A theory that foragers choose
those species of plants and animals that maximize their
caloric intake for the time spent hunting and gathering.
5. Major Strategies of Food Getting
Cultural Anthropologists have identified five major
strategies of food getting:
Hunting and Gathering
Horticulture
Pastoralism
Agriculture
Industrial Agriculture
6. FOOD GETTING
Food collection
Food production
The origin and spread of food production
7. FOOD COLLECTION
Hunting and Gathering as the way of getting food for most
of the human history
food-collecting societies reside in differentiated
environments and need to store gathered, hunted, and/or
fished foods s food-foraging societies reside in
undifferentiated environments and do not have to store
food; their knowledge of when and where to go to obtain
food items was traditionally sufficient to maintain their
survival.
Subsistence technology
Depend on natural resources such as Animals and Plants
8. features of food collectors
Live in small communities in sparsely populated
territories
Follow nomadic or semi-nomadic rather sedentary life
style
Basic Social unit is ‘Family’ or band, a loose federation
of families
Generally do not have different classes of people
Live in marginal areas
9. Food production
Beginning about 10,000 year ago, with neo-lithic
revolution (Transition from hunting and gathering to
agriculture and settlement).
people began to cultivate and domesticate plants and
animals in response to certain environmental and
demographic conditions.
Today, people depend for their food on some
combination of domesticated plants and animals
By domestication, people acquired to control over
certain natural processes
Such as animal breeding and plant seeding
10. TYPES OF FOOD PRODUCTION
Anthropologists generally distinguish three types of food
production
1) Horticulture
2) Pastoralism
3) Agriculture
4) Industrial Agriculture
11. HORTICULTURE
Growing of crops of all kinds with relatively simple
tools and methods in the absence of permanently
cultivated fields
Tools are usually hand tools
Not used fertilization, irrigation or other ways to
restore soil fertility after growing season
No formal irrigation system
12. Types of horticulture
1. Extensive cultivation
The land is work for short period of time and then left
idle for some years
Nutrient are built up again due to growth of wild
plants and brushes
Soil become fertile when land is not cultivated
13. Types of horticulture
2-long growing tree crops
getting food by cultivating long term harvesting fruits
or ground crops
It is dependence growing land tree crops
14. PASTORALISM
Found in areas that cannot support agriculture because of
inadequate soil, terrain or rainfall
It could be Trans-human( where men move livestock
seasonally) or Nomadism (Whole population move in
search of food and pasture for animals).
Animals have social and symbolic roles.(Marriages..Values
are attached to animals. Also used in social restoration
such settling homicide by exchange of animals).
Stock Friendship: A gift of livestock from one man to
another to strengthen their friendship.
Practice animals husbandry
Keep and breed some animals
Getting more protein than live animals
15. AGRICULTURE
Use of animal power and mechanized technology for
production
Techniques used to enable them to cultivate fields
permanently
Nutrients can be restored through use of fertilization
Using organic materials or inorganic materials
Complex than horticulture
16. Industrial Agriculture
Extensive use of machinery
Extensive exploitation of land
Industrial farmers usually adopt monoculture, i.e, the
production of a single commodity over a vast acreage.
Examples include: Hybrid seeds, excessive use of
fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, multiple crops
in a single field
17. ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF FOOD
PRODUCTION
Shift from food gathering to food production in different parts of the
world.
People began to practice cultivation of plants.
Deliberate collecting of seeds for planting.
Tame wild animals
People began to rely on certain plants or animals
Artificial selection-people encourage the reproduction of certain plants
or animals.
gradually results in types of plants and animals that are distinct from
Wild species-Domestication-the process of establishing human control
over a plant or animals ) reproduction, humans select mates for
animals with certain characteristics.
18. ORIGIN OF FOOD
Plants
Domesticated plants have stronger stem areas where the
seeds attach.
Also tend to have larger edible parts
19.
20.
21. ORIGIN OF FOOD
Animals
Species outside native area, Horses not native to Egypt, but found
there archaeologically around 4,000 years ago.
Morphological changes-shape and size of goat horns (wild=long
and curved, domestic=short and round). Dogs-retain juvenile traits.
Measurements-animals at first tend to get smaller during
domestication,
Sex ratios and age profiles-Less males when using herd animals for
milk. Meat profiles-usually young animals.
Cultural Evidence-captive animals portrayed in artwork, burial of
whole animals with people or by themselves.
