{"id":18425,"date":"2019-08-29T12:39:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T16:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=18425"},"modified":"2019-09-20T11:01:07","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T15:01:07","slug":"talk-hidden-energy-agricultures-long-term-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/event\/talk-hidden-energy-agricultures-long-term-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk – Hidden Energy: Agriculture\u2019s Long-Term Sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hidden2019 McBride Distinguished Lecturer in History<\/h3>\n

* Please note the change in venue to Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Geoff Cunfer<\/strong>, Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan<\/p>\n

For most of human history, farmers were society\u2019s crucial energy suppliers, fueling human labor and animal transportation. Firewood and charcoal from farms cooked food, heated homes, and fired industry. Agriculture set the limits of economic productivity. Fossil fuels became important only after 1700. This lecture explores how farmers historically managed energy flows, maintained soil nutrients, and manipulated natural processes for human goals, using methods from sustainability science to understand environmental history. How sustainable were past farm systems? Does history hold models for long-term agricultural sustainability?<\/p>\n

Geoff Cunfer<\/strong> is Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the founding director of the Historical Geographic Information Systems Lab, the first historical GIS lab in North America, which now has five faculty members, many graduate and undergraduate students, and post-docs and research affiliates from many countries. Originally an environmental historian who focused on agriculture in the semi-arid plains of the United States and Canada, Geoff moved into more deeply interdisciplinary work as leader of a six-year project studying the history of sustainable agriculture in Canada, the U.S., Spain, Austria, Cuba, and Colombia. This project, funded by Canada\u2019s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, focused on\u00a0material and\u00a0energy throughputs in farm systems and the social ecology of old and new world agricultural societies.<\/p>\n

Geoff\u2019s first book, On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment<\/em>\u00a0(Texas A&M Press 2005), was awarded book\u00a0prizes\u00a0by the Social Science History Association\u00a0and the Agricultural History Society. It challenged Donald Worster\u2019s famous thesis that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was caused by farmers over-plowing the plains. He has edited two books, on women\u2019s lives on the Texas High Plains and the environmental history of bison; and he is co-authoring a stream of articles issuing from the sustainability project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2019 McBride Distinguished Lecturer in History * Please note the change in venue to Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall. Geoff Cunfer, Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan For most of human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":957,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","_tribe_events_is_hybrid":"","_tribe_events_is_virtual":"","_tribe_events_virtual_video_source":"","_tribe_events_virtual_embed_video":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button_text":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_at":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_to":[],"_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_event":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_views":"","_tribe_events_virtual_url":"","footnotes":"","spc_primary_tribe_events_cat":0},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[20],"class_list":["post-18425","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","hentry","tribe_events_cat-ssi-events","cat_ssi-events"],"taxonomy_info":{"tribe_events_cat":[{"value":20,"label":"Mitchell Center Events"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"mitchellcenter","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/mitchellcenter\/"},"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/18425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/957"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/18425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18543,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/18425\/revisions\/18543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18425"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=18425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}