Title: 
Headings: 

Content: no! In fact, agriculture usually requires more labor per unit of food produced than does foraging
That is, a farming family has to work more hours per year to provide its own food than a foraging family does
That is why modern (or recent) foragers like the ! Kung prefer to forage rather than to farm
they were quite aware of the farmers who lived near them and the methods they used
but they could get the food they needed with less work by foraging
When Richard Lee asked the ! Kung why they don't farm, one famous reply was "Why should we farm when there are so many mongongo nuts?" butthis only works as long as there aren't too many people for the wild resources to support
when there is a lot of land per person, that is, a very low density of people
if there isn't enough land (or there are too many people), foraging just can't provide enough food
and farming (or herding animals) becomes the only alternative to hunger
This is counterintuitive to many people
we tend to assume that foragers live a hard life and are constantly on the brink of starvation
while we tend to assume that farmers have a comparatively stable, easy source of food
In fact, farmers generally work harder and have less free time than foragers. Agriculture is a devil's bargain
You get more food per acre
But you get less food per hour of work
In economic terms, agriculture increases the returns to land, but decreases the returns to labor
In a given area, agriculture can produce more food overall, and so feed more people
But they have to work harder than before to survive
There is an old idea that when people switched from foraging to farming, they escaped the pressures of a precarious existence and suddenly "had the time" to develop "civilized" features like art, literature, science, and technology
but now you know that it was quite the reverse
farmers have lessfree time than foragers
so we need some more sophisticated explanation for the development of complex society
Agriculture allows people settle in one place (become sedentary), and creates reasons for them to do so
It allowsthem to settle because
agriculture can provide enough food in a limited area that the food is not exhausted before the next season replenishes it
so people don't have to move in order to get food
It encouragesthem to settle because
fields must be tilled, weeded, irrigated, harvested, etc., which requires people to be there at many different times during the year
harvests produce a lot of food at one time, which has to be stored for use over a longer period
staying near the stored food is easier than carrying it around
Under some circumstances, foragers can be sedentary or semi-sedentary, too
but this is not common, and usually involves extreme specialization on one or a few very productive wild resources in specially favored places
we will see that these special circumstances may have been keys to the initial development of agriculture in certain favored locations
agriculture, on the other hand, allows and encourages people to become sedentary in many different environments
Agriculture and sedentism tend to lead to population growth
They tend to increase fertility for biological reasons
Increased carbohydrate consumption from agricultural crops may keep body fat levels high enough to increase fertility (or at least not periodically reduce it)
foragers often get very lean during the season of scarcity (it varies in different regions), which reduces female fertility
this is an effect familiar to female runners and dancers
Less mobile mothers have fewer spontaneous abortions
Since the mother does not have to carry her infant around while foraging, sedentism makes it practical for a woman to have more than one infant at a time, allowing larger families
mothers are not forced to take measures to prevent having another infant while a previous one is still small
such as abstinence rules, contraceptive measures, induced abortions, or infanticide, all of which were practiced by at least some foragers
Less mobile mothers may wean children sooner; this shortens the period of reduced fertility due to lactation
They may wean earlier simply because the child is not always right in their arms or on their back, as it is for mobile foragers. This has the unintentional result of increasing fertility
They also may wean earlier with the intention of having more children for farm labor; many foragers are aware of the fertility-inhibiting effect of lactation
Agriculture also provides economic incentives to have more children
Farming creates a greater demand for labor, that is, kids to help with the work
Sedentism reduces the cost of having children, since the mother does not have to carry them around as much
So farmers tend to have large families, and the population tends to  grow
Population growth makes the shift to agricultur