A new year has come. A year in which we start with fresh ideas and good intentions. Now it has become January it won’t be long before days are getter longer and grass is getting greener. Yes, we can start to count down too fresh and fertile spring!
One piece of land is more fertile than another. World explorers like Christopher Columbus and those travelling for the VOC (Dutch East India Company) gratefully used this phenomenon to pick up food along their long sea journeys. Some countries should acknowledge these men for discovering this wealth of biodiversity and the lands ability to produce food. The South African Cape of Good Hope (now Cape Town) is one of the settlements where boats embarked to load fresh food. The Dutch gardener not only cultivated crops but also collected seeds from all over the country. It now is one of the worlds largest and most diverse botanic gardens.
Agriculture has been even more important for the Portuguese island of Madeira. In the 15th century it was rediscovered by Captain Zarco and Captain Vaz Teixeira. Among with some other people they settled down in the least rough southern shore of the country. To ensure they survived (the island is situated situated 500 km from the African mainland) they started to clear the land for agriculture. A though job since the island is completely made out of volcanic rock.
Therefore they used slaves from West Africa to make so called levadas. These canals are still used to transport excessive water from the north of the country to the dryer south. It enabled the first inhabitants to grow wheat which they feed not only themselves but also some of the Portuguese mainland.
When wheat markets started to fall, the then governor decided to grow other products. In that time sugar cane and sugar beet were rare spices in Europe thus worth a lot of money. Thanks to this product the country became very wealthy. But it also caused a mayor change of it’s landscape. Since a lot of money could be made, the governor decided to clear more land and prepare it for the production of sugar. He didn’t care about the value of the old laurisilva trees or the island’s old forests. After 200 years the sugar production shifted to South America and Africa. The production of wine was started instead.
If we now hear that native trees and old forests have been cut down and lost forever just for some temporary wealth we would probably disapprove it. Then forgetting that it still happens every day. Forests are cut to make room for agriculture. Farmers land and nature is used to build new cities. People might think about what’s good for us now and for the near future, but forget about the long term consequences. Not only when it concerns food production.
