SAHARA Highlights: Agriculture and Food Production

This month’s Highlights look at some of the services and industries that feed us. During these last six months, agriculture, food production, and food retail workers have kept food on our tables despite the risks to their own health. This small sample from SAHARA comes from the many contributions that document farms, processing plants, food distribution, and markets—historic and contemporary. Thank you to all contributors.

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Incan agricultural terraces, Pisac, Cuzco, Peru, ca. 1450. Photograph by Georgi Kyorlenski, 2018.

Farmhouse, shed and barn, Valea Brazilor, Romania, 1960s.  From the contributor, Juliana Maxim: “Under Communism, households such as these had been integrated in a system of collectivized agricultural production. A state-run fruit canning factory nearby had provided, from the 1960s to the 1990s, both employment and a market for the harvest. After the fall of Communism, the factory was closed down. Since then, the village has been severely affected by urban migration, and most houses and land have been abandoned.”  Photograph by Juliana Maxim, 2013.

Migrant worker housing, near Los Banos, Merced, California, early 20^th century. Photograph by Dell Upton, 1989.

Manuel Antonio Gongora (chief engineer for the United Fruit Company), Banana plantation buildings, Turrialba, Costa Rica, 1941–1967. The buildings are part of Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE).  Photograph by Nikki Moore, 2017.

Grain silos and elevators, Buffalo, New York, early 19^th century. Photograph by David Schalliol.

Achyut Kanvinde, Dairy plant, Mehsana, Gujarat, India, 1969–1974.  Photograph by Peter Serenyi.

View of the Old Town of Warsaw, Poland, showing the central market square (note that the majority of the buildings in the Old Town were destroyed in 1944, and reconstructed in Gothic, Baroque and Modern styles in the 1960s). Photograph by Anna Jozefacka, 2012.

Sir Baptist Hicks, patron, Market Hall, Gloucestershire, England, 1627. Photograph by Jeffrey Klee, 2013.

Small shopping center with farmer’s market, serving the Drumul Taberii housing district, Bucharest, Romania, built early 1970s. Photograph by Juliana Maxim, 2013.

Central Market MBK II, Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of Congo, mid-1950s. This market occupies one entire block in one of Mbandaka's so-called "native towns". Photograph by Jon Lagae, 2014.

A&H Market, Los Angeles, California, 1905, 1920.  Photograph by Dell Upton, 2011.