Tag: Ancient Egypt

Commentary: Farmers are Turning to an Ancient Practice to Improve Agriculture

RealClearWire

From ancient Egypt to medieval England, cultivating one or more crops in the same field was common practice among many farmers for thousands of years. However, in the last century, food producers largely stopped ‘intercropping’ and moved towards an industrial type of agriculture – a shift that contributed to 34% of the world’s farmland being degraded today. 

“Interest is growing in intercropping [again] because farmers increasingly understand it improves their soil health,” said Jerry Allford, an organic farmer and advisor from the Soil Association, a UK charity promoting sustainable agriculture. Jerry thinks this renewed focus can “open up a whole new way of farming” because it can bridge profitability with regenerative agriculture practices. 

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Commentary: The Monetary Mistakes Behind the Downfall of Cleopatra and the Last Dynasty of Ancient Egypt

Michigan Star Staff

When we think of ancient Egypt, most of us recall first its most famous and distinctive features: pyramids, pharaohs, and the Nile. As an economic historian, I hoped at the start of recent research that a sound currency might be another distinction of the Egyptians I would discover.

Alas, their story is pretty much the same one we find throughout history and all over the world: Money is monopolized by government officials, who then cheat the people by debasing it—which means diluting the precious metal content in it’s coinage, printing too much of it if it’s paper, or both. Egypt is no exception, though its experience is rich in colorful perpetrators, from fifteen pharaohs named Ptolemy to the Cleopatra of both Shakespeare and Hollywood fame.

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