The standard narrative about grain production is that it is
an immense step forward for humankind that allowed for civilization to take
place. We get the impression that there are so many benefits to grain
cultivation that people would be crazy not to grow grain, in large quantities, once they knew how
to. And yet, it has been the case that
many people around the world actively resisted doing this!
As I first learned in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, while grain is easy to store, this also makes it
quite easy to steal, en masse. The bandits in the movie had a practice of
stealing as much as they could from the farmers while allowing them to be
productive. In the movie the farmers
have a practice of hiding their grain.
Scott discusses how farmers across the world often bury their grain to
keep it out of the hands of bandits, tax collectors, and armies. He offers us some interesting facts that may give a twist to how we consider teaching the importance of grain for civilization:
1) Because grain is less perishable than fruits and vegetables,
it can be stored and used in military marches.
2) Military campaigns have typically been seasonal, planned to avoid the rains, and often in conjunction with the ripening of crops so armies could renew their food supply along the way. In the Near East, China, and Southeast Asia - and I imagine in other areas as well - peasants with geographically accessible fields of grain would not be surprised to find an army stopping by once the harvest was over.
2) Military campaigns have typically been seasonal, planned to avoid the rains, and often in conjunction with the ripening of crops so armies could renew their food supply along the way. In the Near East, China, and Southeast Asia - and I imagine in other areas as well - peasants with geographically accessible fields of grain would not be surprised to find an army stopping by once the harvest was over.
3) In Scott's terms, grain is legible: fields of grain cannot be hidden, so the state knows exactly
how much is being grown, knows when it ripens, when it will be harvested, and
when it can be collected.
4) Grain can easily be destroyed: an effective form of
punishment.
5) Populations that grow grain are not mobile, and easy to keep
track of.
6) It is easy to calculate the yield of a field of grain, meaning that a state can predict and plan for grain taxes. When farmers produced less than the state predicted, they would typically not be cut a break. This is true especially because from the states point of view, farmers have every reason to lie about their yield.
All of these factors make grain an efficient crop for the
state. They also make life rather
difficult for those who grow grain, and thus, many people have avoided the production
of grain. Root crops in particular are strategic
in their illegibility to the state: only the community knows how much food is being grown. Not
only this, root crops can stay underground for a long time – they can be picked
as needed by a community, meaning they are not at risk of being stolen en masse as is the case with sacks of
grain. In conjunction with this, many peoples have also chosen to live far from state centers, or in geographically inaccessible areas: the choice to be "uncivilized".