1.
Agriculture
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Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of human civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science, the history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology, genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts, the major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats, fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo, other useful materials are also produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, biofuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, field, Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use resources to produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops. This definition includes arable farming or agronomy, and horticulture, all terms for the growing of plants, even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry, Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 15,000 years ago, rice was domesticated in China between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia at an unknown time
2.
History of agriculture
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The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9,500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans, pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. Sugarcane and some vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5,000 BC, in the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the period in Papua New Guinea. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3,000 BC, irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 200 years, starting with the British Agricultural Revolution. The Haber-Bosch process allowed the synthesis of nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale. Modern agriculture has raised social, political, and environmental issues including pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs. In response, organic farming developed in the century as a consciously pesticide-free alternative. Scholars have developed a number of hypotheses to explain the origins of agriculture. Current models indicate that wild stands that had been harvested previously started to be planted, localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant. When major climate change took place after the last ice age and these conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time, early people began altering communities of flora and fauna for their own benefit through means such as fire-stick farming and forest gardening very early
3.
History of organic farming
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Traditional farming was the original type of agriculture, and has been practiced for thousands of years. All traditional farming is now considered to be organic farming although at the time there were no known inorganic methods, for example, forest gardening, a fully organic food production system which dates from prehistoric times, is thought to be the worlds oldest and most resilient agroecosystem. The history of modern revival of organic farming dates back to the first half of the 20th century at a time when there was a growing reliance on these new synthetic, inorganic methods. The first 40 years of the 20th century saw advances in biochemistry. The introduction of the internal combustion engine ushered in the era of the tractor. Research in plant breeding led to the commercialization of hybrid seed, and a new manufacturing process made nitrogen fertilizer — first synthesized in the mid-19th century — affordably abundant. Fields grew bigger and cropping more specialized to make efficient use of machinery. The reduced need for labour and animal labour that machinery, herbicides. Consciously organic agriculture began more or less simultaneously in Central Europe and their research and further development of these methods is recorded in his writings, notably, his 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, which influenced many scientists and farmers of the day. In Germany, Rudolf Steiners development, biodynamic agriculture, was probably the first comprehensive system of what we now call organic farming and this began with a lecture series Steiner presented at a farm in Koberwitz in 1924. Steiner emphasized the role in guiding and balancing the interaction of the animals, plants. Healthy animals depended upon healthy plants, healthy plants upon healthy soil and his system was based on his philosophy of anthroposophy rather than a good understanding of science. In 1909, American agronomist F. H. King toured China, Korea, and Japan, studying traditional fertilization, tillage and he published his findings in Farmers of Forty Centuries. King foresaw a world movement for the introduction of new and improved methods of agriculture, the term organic farming was coined by Lord Northbourne in his book Look to the Land. From his conception of the farm as organism, he described a holistic, in 1939 Lady Eve Balfour launched the Haughley Experiment on farmland in England. Lady Balfour believed that health and future depended on how the soil was used. The experiment was run to generate data in support of these beliefs, four years later, she published The Living Soil, based on the initial findings of the Haughley Experiment. Widely read, it led to the formation of a key international organic advocacy group, in Japan, Masanobu Fukuoka, a microbiologist working in soil science and plant pathology, began to doubt the modern agricultural movement
4.
Neolithic Revolution
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These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants to learn how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants and it was the worlds first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of available, with a switch to agriculture which led to a downturn in human nutrition. The Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a set of food-producing techniques. These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation which allowed extensive surplus food production, personal land and private property ownership led to an hierarchical society, with an elite Social class, comprising a nobility, polity, and military. The first fully developed manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities, the Levant followed by Mesopotamia are the sites of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of revolutions in Middle Eastern history. The beginning of process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. Recent archaeological research suggests that in regions such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear. There are several competing theories as to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The most prominent of these are, The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childes book Man Makes Himself. However, today this theory has little support amongst archaeologists because subsequent climate data suggests that the region was getting wetter rather than drier, the Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food, which drove agricultural technology, various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food. The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an adaptation of plants. Starting with domestication by protection of plants, it led to specialization of location. Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with a stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wrights book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress popularized this hypothesis, leonid Grinin argues that whatever plants were cultivated, the independent invention of agriculture always took place in special natural environments. It is supposed that the cultivation of cereals started somewhere in the Near East, andrew Moore suggested that the Neolithic Revolution originated over long periods of development in the Levant, possibly beginning during the Epipaleolithic
5.
Arab Agricultural Revolution thesis
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He listed eighteen crops that were widely diffused during the Islamic period, including four staple crops, namely durum wheat, Asiatic rice, sorghum, and cotton. He also argued that such as irrigation were spread across the region at that time. Watsons proposal was an extension of the Spanish historian Antonia Garcia Maceiras 1876 hypothesis of a revolution in Al-Andalus. It also recalled the Belgian economic historian Henri Pirennes 1939 view of the way that a seventh century Islamic maritime power in the Mediterranean had isolated Europe from trading there, Watsons work was met with some early scepticism, for example from the historian Jeremy Johns in 1984. Johns however concluded that The hypothesis of an Abbasid agricultural revolution is challenging, the historian Eliyahu Ashtor wrote in 1976 that agricultural production declined in areas of Iraq and Egypt, on the basis of records of taxes collected on cultivated areas. In the case of cotton, which the Romans grew mainly in Egypt, cultivation remained minor in the classical Islamic period, squatriti noted that Watson had originally trained in economics, and applied this interest to his historical studies. Squatriti described Watsons paper as concise and elegant, and popular for its usefulness in supporting many different historians agendas
6.
British Agricultural Revolution
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The British Agricultural Revolution was the unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain due to increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the century to 1770, however, historians continue to dispute when exactly such a revolution took place and of what it consisted. Rather than an event, G. E. This has led more recent historians to argue that any statements about the Agricultural Revolution are difficult to sustain. One important change in farming methods was the move in rotation to turnips. Turnips can be grown in winter and are rooted, allowing them to gather minerals unavailable to shallow rooted crops. Clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form of fertiliser and this permitted the intensive arable cultivation of light soils on enclosed farms and provided fodder to support increased livestock numbers whose manure added further to soil fertility. The British Agricultural Revolution was the result of the interaction of social, economic. Major developments and innovations include, Norfolk four-course crop rotation, Fodder crops, particularly turnips and clover, the Dutch improved the Chinese plough so that it could be pulled with fewer oxen or horses. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants, turnip roots, for example, can recover nutrients from deep under the soil. The Norfolk System, as it is now known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different kinds, an important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labor at times when demand was not at peak levels. Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was not permitted under the field system because they interfered with access to the fields. Besides, other livestock could graze the turnips. Normally from 10–30% of the land in a three crop rotation system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year, over the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands. The planting of legumes helped to plant growth in the empty field due to the bacteria on legume roots ability to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil in a form that plants could use. Other crops that were grown were flax and members of the mustard family. Convertible husbandry was the alternation of a field between pasture and grain, because nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, ploughing up pasture and planting grains resulted in high yields for a few years
7.
Green Revolution
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The initiatives resulted in the adoption of new technologies, including. All of these together were seen as a package of practices to supersede traditional technology and it is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution and it has been argued that “during the twentieth century two revolutions transformed rural Mexico, the Mexican Revolution and the Green Revolution. With the support of the Mexican government, the U. S, in the center and south of Mexico, where large-scale production faced challenges, agricultural production languished. Increased production meant food self-sufficiency in Mexico to feed its growing and urbanizing population, technology was seen as a valuable way to feed the poor, and would relieve some pressure of the land redistribution process. During the administration of Manuel Avila Camacho, the government put resources into developing new breeds of plants, in 1943, the Mexican government founded the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which became a base for international agricultural research. Agriculture in Mexico had been an issue, a key factor in some regions’ participation in the Mexican Revolution. It was also an issue, which the development of a cohort trained agronomists. Technical aid can be seen as also serving political ends in the international sphere, the government created the Mexican Agricultural Program to be the lead organization in raising productivity. One of their successes was wheat production, with varieties the agency’s scientists helped create dominating wheat production as early as 1951,1965, Mexico became the showcase for extending the Green Revolution to other areas of Latin America and beyond, into Africa and Asia. New breeds of maize, beans, along with wheat produced bumper crops with proper inputs, many Mexican farmers who had been dubious about the scientists or hostile to them came to see the scientific approach to agriculture worth adopting. In 1960, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines with the Ford Foundation, a rice crossing between Dee-Geo-woo-gen and Peta was done at IRRI in 1962. In 1966, one of the lines became a new cultivar. IR8 required the use of fertilizers and pesticides, but produced higher yields than the traditional cultivars. Annual rice production in the Philippines increased from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades, the switch to IR8 rice made the Philippines a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century. In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine, Norman Borlaug was invited to India by the adviser to the Indian minister of agriculture C. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by Indias grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated to import wheat seed from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. Punjab was selected by the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its water supply
8.
Farm
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A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops, it is the basic facility in food production. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, in modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or sea. Farming originated independently in different parts of the world, as hunter gatherer societies transitioned to food production rather than, food capture. It may have started about 12,000 years ago with the domestication of livestock in the Fertile Crescent in western Asia, modern farms in developed countries are highly mechanized. In Europe, traditional farms are giving way to larger production units. In Australia, some farms are large because the land is unable to support a high stocking density of livestock because of climatic conditions. In less developed countries, small farms are the norm, the word is from the medieval Latin noun firma, also the source of the French word ferme, meaning a fixed agreement, contract, from the classical Latin adjective firmus meaning strong, stout, firm. Farming has been innovated at multiple different points and places in human history and it was the worlds first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. Subsequent step-changes in human farming practices were provoked by the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century, farming spread from the Middle East to Europe and by 4,000 BC people that lived in the central part of Europe were using oxen to pull plows and wagons. A farm may operate under a system or with a variety of cereal or arable crops. Specialist farms are often denoted as such, thus a dairy farm, fish farm, some farms may not use the word at all, hence vineyard, orchard, market garden or truck farm. Some farms may be denoted by their location, such as a hill farm. Many other terms are used to describe farms to denote their methods of production, as in collective, corporate, intensive, organic or vertical. There are many breeds of cattle that can be milked some of the best producing ones include Holstein, Norwegian Red, Kostroma, Brown Swiss, in most Western countries, a centralized dairy facility processes milk and dairy products, such as cream, butter, and cheese. In the United States, these dairies are usually local companies, dairy farms generally sell male calves for veal meat, as dairy breeds are not normally satisfactory for commercial beef production. Many dairy farms also grow their own feed, typically including corn, alfalfa and this is fed directly to the cows, or stored as silage for use during the winter season. Additional dietary supplements are added to the feed to milk production. Poultry farms are devoted to raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, a pig farm is one that specializes in raising pigs or hogs for bacon, ham and other pork products and may be free range, intensive, or both
9.
Animal husbandry
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Animal husbandry is the management and care of farm animals by human beings, in which genetic qualities and behavior, considered to be advantageous to humans, are further developed. The term can refer to the practice of breeding and raising livestock to promote desirable traits in animals for utility, sport, pleasure. Animal husbandry has been practiced for thousands of years since the first domestication of animals, selective breeding for desired traits was first established as a scientific practice by Robert Bakewell during the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century. One of his most important breeding programs was with sheep, using native stock, he was able to quickly select for large, yet fine-boned sheep, with long, lustrous wool. The Lincoln Longwool was improved by Bakewell and in turn the Lincoln was used to develop the subsequent breed, named the New Leicester and it was hornless and had a square, meaty body with straight top lines. These sheep were exported widely and have contributed to modern breeds. Under his influence, English farmers began to breed cattle for use primarily as beef for consumption -, long-horned heifers were crossed with the Westmoreland bull to eventually create the Dishley Longhorn. Over the following decades, farm animals increased dramatically in size, in 1700, the average weight of a bull sold for slaughter was 370 pounds. By 1786, that weight had more than doubled to 840 pounds, in more modern times herds are tended on horses, all-terrain vehicles, motorbikes, four-wheel drive vehicles, and helicopters, depending on the terrain and livestock concerned. Today, herd managers often oversee thousands of animals and many staff, farms, stations and ranches may employ breeders, herd health specialists, feeders, and milkers to help care for the animals. Techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer are used today, not only as methods to guarantee that females breed regularly. This may be done by transplanting embryos from high-quality females into lower-quality surrogate mothers - freeing up the higher-quality mother to be reimpregnated and this practice vastly increases the number of offspring which may be produced by a small selection of the best quality parent animals. On one hand, this improves the ability of the animals to feed to meat, milk, or fiber more efficiently. On the other, it decreases genetic diversity, increasing the severity of disease outbreaks among other risks. The semi-natural, unfertilized pastures formed by traditional methods in Europe, were managed and maintained by the grazing and mowing of livestock. Animal agriculture is responsible for 20%-33% of all fresh water consumption in the world today, livestock or livestock feed occupies 1/3 of the earth’s ice-free land. Animal agriculture is the cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution. Animal agriculture contributes to species extinction in many ways, the widespread use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers used in the production of feed crops often interferes with the reproductive systems of animals and poison waterways
10.
Cattle
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Cattle—colloquially cows—are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, cattle are raised as livestock for meat, as dairy animals for milk and other dairy products, and as draft animals. Other products include leather and dung for manure or fuel, in some regions, such as parts of India, cattle have significant religious meaning. From as few as 80 progenitors domesticated in southeast Turkey about 10,500 years ago, according to an estimate from 2011, in 2009, cattle became one of the first livestock animals to have a fully mapped genome. Some consider cattle the oldest form of wealth, and cattle raiding consequently one of the earliest forms of theft. Cattle were originally identified as three species, Bos taurus, the European or taurine cattle, Bos indicus, the zebu, and the extinct Bos primigenius. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle and these have been reclassified as one species, Bos taurus, with three subspecies, Bos taurus primigenius, Bos taurus indicus, and Bos taurus taurus. Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other related species. Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and zebu, but also one or both of these and some other members of the genus Bos – yaks, banteng. Hybrids such as the breed can even occur between taurine cattle and either species of bison, leading some authors to consider them part of the genus Bos. However, cattle cannot successfully be hybridized with more distantly related bovines such as water buffalo or African buffalo, the aurochs originally ranged throughout Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia. In historical times, its range became restricted to Europe, breeders have attempted to recreate cattle of similar appearance to aurochs by crossing traditional types of domesticated cattle, creating the Heck cattle breed. Cattle did not originate as the term for bovine animals and it was borrowed from Anglo-Norman catel, itself from medieval Latin capitale principal sum of money, capital, itself derived in turn from Latin caput head. Cattle originally meant movable personal property, especially livestock of any kind, the word is a variant of chattel and closely related to capital in the economic sense. The term replaced earlier Old English feoh cattle, property, which today as fee. The word cow came via Anglo-Saxon cū, from Common Indo-European gʷōus = a bovine animal, compare Persian gâv, Sanskrit go-, Welsh buwch. The plural cȳ became ki or kie in Middle English, and a plural ending was often added, giving kine, kien. This is the origin of the now archaic English plural, kine, the Scots language singular is coo or cou, and the plural is kye
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