The Four Horsemen of the Ecopocalypse: the Agricultural Ecology of the Great Leap Forward.

China's Great Leap Forward of 1958–60, an attempt to increase agricultural production through increased labor inputs, resulted in the greatest famine in world history from 1959 to 1961. Most histories emphasize the political mistakes of this period, which were disastrous. But to understand how the political mistakes led to the famine, here I concentrate on the ecosystem mismanagement that led to drastic drops in food production. To explain these effects, I use the concept of the "Four Horsemen of the Ecopocalypse:" over-emphasis on single variables, cross-scale mismatches, top-down panaceas, and ignorance of system feedbacks, all of which eliminated the resilience of agro-ecosystems to both internal contradictions and external disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]