Connections to Chapter 1

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8793816

The first chapter really made me want to look into where our agriculture was in the past vs how we view it today. The points mad on how agriculture isn’t just this neutral system that naturally improved over time but was shaped by colonization, displacement, and inequality led to me finding research done by Emma Layman. The article pretty much sums up how all the damage and inequality in the current system isn't random, just as we've mentioned in class.

Modern agriculture is usually talked about like it’s just the result of progress and better technology, but honestly, it’s a lot more complicated than that. According to Emma Layman and her co-authors, agriculture in the U.S. is deeply connected to colonization and slavery, which means it didn’t develop in a fair or equal way. Instead, it was shaped by systems that took land from Indigenous people and relied on forced labor, setting up patterns that still exist today.

Colonization basically turned land into something to be owned and exploited for profit. Indigenous farming practices, which were often more sustainable and connected to the environment, were ignored or pushed aside. At the same time, enslaved people were forced to work the land, and that became a major part of how agriculture functioned. Even though things have changed over time, a lot of those same ideas, like prioritizing large-scale production and profit, are still part of modern agriculture.