Environmental Effects of The Columbian Exchange

The environmental impact of the Columbian Exchange is, in fact, the influence of the exchange of plants and crops between the New and Old World. This exchange of plants and crops profoundly affects every continent and civilization. How did the environmental changes impact the Americas? Europe? Africa? What are the lasting influences of these environmental changes?

Demographic and Environmental Effects of the Columbian Exchange

The environmental effects of the Columbian Exchange began with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The plants, crops, and food his crew brought on their journey would have been the first Old World plants in North and South America.

Any plants or crops Columbus discovered, traded for, or took back to Spain would have been the first of those plants to Europe, Africa, and Asia. The table below lists the notable plants exchanged between the New World and the Old World in the decades following Columbus’s voyages.

Environmental Effects of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas

Europeans brought with them to the New World not just diseases but cultivated plants for food, fiber, and profit. Early explorers attempted to recreate European diets in their discovered world. Crops such as wheat and rice were introduced as most European settlers understood their cultivation and usage in their diets. Over time, these crops and others, such as turnips and onions, combined with the indigenous plants blended into a new cuisine. Let us look at the crop that had the most significant impact on the Americas: sugarcane.

Fig. 1 - An image of a sugarcane plantation in Cuba circa 1903

Environmental Effects of the Columbian Exchange on Europe

Just as crops transformed the Americas economically and culinarily, the same occurred in Europe with plants from the Americas. It is hard to imagine Italian cuisine without tomato sauce or Irish and eastern European dishes without potatoes. The crops of primary importance in Europe have been beans, corn, and, most significantly, potatoes.

Fig. 2 - Three Irish workers harvest potatoes circa 1900

Of these crops–beans, corn, and potato–the potato is the most important. Easily cultivated even in the worst soils and climates high in nutritional value, the potato spread in popularity throughout Europe during the 1600s. The potato could produce more overall nutrition from the average piece of land in Europe, especially northern Europe, than any other crop.

Environmental Effects of the Columbian Exchange on Africa

The importance of New World foods in Africa is more influential than in any other continent of the Old World. The bean, tomato, sweet potato, cacao, and peanut have been and are vital to the population of Africa. The last two, cacao and peanut, are essential cash crops for exportation. The two most important consumed crops are corn and manioc.

Once corn was introduced to Africa, it was under heavy cultivation on the continent, especially in West Africa and tropical regions, by the late 1500s. Before the introduction of corn, the main grains for consumption were millet and sorghums. By the 1900s, corn could be found virtually everywhere on the continent, and all other grains except for rice were exceeded in production.

Fig. 3 - Manioc Roots, indigenous to South America, the root has become prevalent on the African continent.

Environmental Effects of the Columbian Exchange: Most Significant

• The most significant environmental effect of the Columbian Exchange is its impact on the demographics of the planet
• The most critical factor in the environmental changes of the Columbian Exchange is the drastic population growth across the world
  • The one factor that will promote population growth, even considering death rates, birth rates, wars, and the massive effects of disease on the Americas, is increasing and improving the food supply
  • The Columbian Exchange allowed cultures to improve the production of standard (consumed) crops; new plants found utilization in previous soils and seasons usually went to waste, causing more production and, thus, more population.
  • In addition, most crops that were exchanged and spread in popularity were generally of more excellent nutritional value than the crops they replaced

Rapid worldwide population growth had only occurred twice before the Columbian Exchange in human history: when humans invented tools and then when humans created agriculture. Then it happened again with the Columbian Exchange once trade routes were established across the Atlantic Ocean with the New World, and more routes were established around Africa to India and Asia.

All these factors combined created a population boom across the 1600s and 1700s that expanded the populations of the Old-World countries and could grow through the settlement of the people of the New World even as the indigenous populations rapidly declined.