Agriculture is a major industry in the United States, a net exporter of food. As of the 2007 census of agriculture, there were 2.2 million farms, covering an area of 922 million acres, an average of 418 acres per farm. Although agricultural activity occurs in every state in the union, it is concentrated in the Great Plains, a vast expanse of flat, arable land in the center of the nation in the region west of the Great Lakes and east of the Rocky Mountains; the eastern, wetter half is a major corn and soybean producing region known as the Corn Belt, while the western, drier half is known as the Wheat Belt for its high rate of wheat production. The Central Valley of California, produces fruits and nuts; the American South has been a large producer of cotton and rice, but it has declined in agricultural production over the past century. The U. S. has led developments in seed improvement, such as hybridization, in expanding uses for crops from the work of George Washington Carver to bioplastics and biofuels.

The mechanization of farming and intensive farming have been major themes in U. S. history, including John Deere's steel plow, Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, the widespread success of the Fordson tractor and the combine harvester. Modern agriculture in the U. S. ranges from hobby farms and small-scale producers to large commercial farms covering thousands of acres of cropland or rangeland. Corn, tomatoes, potatoes and sunflower seeds constitute some of the major holdovers from the agricultural endowment of the Americas. Colonists had more access to land in the colonial United States; the organization of labor was complex including free persons and indentured servants depending on the regions where either slaves or poor landless laborers were available to work on family farms. European agricultural practices affected the New England landscape. Colonists brought livestock over from Europe. Grazing animals required a lot of land and food and the act of grazing itself destroyed native grasses, which were being replaced by European species.

New species of weeds were introduced and began to thrive as they were capable of withstanding the grazing of animals, whereas native species could not. The practices associated with keeping livestock contributed to the deterioration of the forests and fields. Colonists would cut down the trees and allow their cattle and livestock to graze in the forest and never plant more trees; the animals tore up the ground so much as to cause long-term destruction and damage. Soil exhaustion was a huge problem in New England agriculture. Farming with oxen did allow the colonist to farm more land but it increased erosion and decreased soil fertility; this was due to deeper plow cuts in the soil that allowed the soil more contact with oxygen causing nutrient depletion. In grazing fields, the large number of cattle in the New England, the soil was being compacted by the cattle and this did not give the soil enough oxygen to sustain life. In the United States, farms spread from the colonies westward along with the settlers.

In cooler regions, wheat was the crop of choice when lands were newly settled, leading to a "wheat frontier" that moved westward over the course of years. Common in the antebellum Midwest was farming corn while raising hogs, complementing each other since it was difficult to get grain to market before the canals and railroads. After the "wheat frontier" had passed through an area, more diversified farms including dairy cattle took its place. Warmer regions saw plantings of cotton and herds of beef cattle. In the early colonial south, raising tobacco and cotton was common through the use of slave labor until the Civil War. In the northeast, slaves were used in agriculture until the early 19th century. In the Midwest, slavery was prohibited by the Freedom Ordinance of 1787; the introduction and broad adoption of scientific agriculture since the mid-19th century contributed to economic growth in the United States. This development was facilitated by the Morrill Act and the Hatch Act of 1887 which established in each state a land-grant university and a federally funded system of agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension networks which place extension agents in each state.

Soybeans were not cultivated in the United States until the early 1930s, by 1942 it became the world's largest soybean producer, due in part to World War II and the "need for domestic sources of fats and meal". Between 1930 and 1942, the United States' share of world soybean production grew from 3% to 47%, by 1969 it had risen to 76%. By 1973 soybeans were the United States' "number one cash crop, leading export commodity, ahead of both wheat and corn". Significant areas of farmland were abandoned during the Great Depression and incorporated into nascent national forests. "Sodbuster" and "Swampbuster" restrictions written into federal farm programs starting in the 1970s reversed a decades-long trend of habitat destruction that began in 1942 when farmers were encouraged to plant all possible land in support of the war effort. In the United States, federal programs administered through local Soil and Water Conservation Districts provide technical assistance and partial funding to farmers who wish to implement management practices to conserve soil and limit erosion and floods.

Scholarship has shown that farmers in the early United States were open to planting new crops, raising new animals and adopting new innovations as increased agricultural productivity in turn increased the demand for shipping services

Mazlum Doğan was one of the founding members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party and a member of its central committee. He was a Kurdish Alevi Muslim. After finishing high school, he enrolled at Hacettepe University in Ankara in 1974. In 1976 he left the University and joined the Kurdish student movement transforming into the Kurdistan Workers' Party, otherwise known as the PKK, he has been the first chief editor of the parties' newspaper Serxwebûn. In 1979, he had planned to leave Turkey towards Syria, but was arrested over accusations of founding and leading a terrorist organisation, taking part in the liberation of a comrade from a state hospital in Diyarbakır, identity document forgery. After serving time in the infamous Diyarbakir No. 5 prison, Mazlum Doğan committed suicide in protest of the Turkish coup d'etat and the inhumane conditions he and other prisoners were facing inside of the penitentiary. Today he is seen as a martyr for the Kurdish resistance movement. Mazlum was raised by his mother and his father, Kazim Doğan in the Teman village of the Karakoçan/Elâzığ Province of Turkey.

He had three older sisters, Arife and Bircan. Delil was killed by special operation teams on October 7, 1980. Doğan began his high school studies in Balıkesir, located in Western Turkey. After passing the entrance exams, he enrolled at the prestigious University of Hacettepe in Ankara, Department of Economics, in 1974. While studying at university, he met other young Kurds. Reading developed into a passion of his life; those who knew him well have said. Through his readings, he became informed on the cruel world of oppression, controlling him and other Kurds his entire life. Determined to fight discrimination if it meant with his own life, Doğan left the university in 1976 and went back to the Kurdish region to organize political works. There he joined the Kurdish student movement, which has been, in parts, the precursor of the Kurdistan Workers' Party; the PKK's origins can be traced back to 1974 when Öcalan and a small group of leftist students, including Doğan, from the underground student movement Dev-Genç decided to develop a Kurdish-based left wing organization.

In 1971 Abdullah Öcalan joined the underground movements trying to overthrow the government system, which he saw as an oppressive and fascist, while he was student at the Ankara University Political Sciences Faculty where he met Mazlum Doğan, studying Economics. Öcalan and Doğan used the skills and the social network that they had developed during this period to become youth leaders. Like "Dev-Genç", Apocus was a splinter organization of Dev-Genç; the core of the organization was led by Öcalan. The original sixteen members became known as the Ankara Democratic Association of Higher Education; the organization was located in Turkey. During this period, Öcalan, Doğan, the rest of their supporters were known as Apocus, in Turkish "Apocular". What made Apocus the PKK or Kurdistan Workers' Party, different was that it decided to move its activities from Ankara, the capital city, to southern border towns of Turkey. Unlike most Kurdish political parties, which adopted a rather conservative outlook and were organized around tribal leaders and structures, they had a fierce stance, strong convictions, a disciplined but decentralized organization which contributed to a steady rise and growing effectiveness.

Much of the early development was inspired by the rise of decolonization movements and their potential to be adapted to the Kurdish question. Transferring to southern border towns with a radical left rhetoric gave the Apocus movement initial resources during a time when Turkey had problems with Syria. Mazlum Doğan and other leftist actors under the lead of Abdullah Öcalan who were participating in the Kurdish student movement continued to organize and developed into an official political party on November 25, 1978 in the village of Fis near Lice, Turkey; as a result of his determination and devotion, Doğan became a member of the Central Committee of the party. The official name of the party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, was decided on in April 1979, during a meeting of the central committee; the meeting in Fis got to be remembered as the First Congress of the PKK. Doğan became the first chief editor of the parties' newspaper Serxwebûn. Shortly after the founding of the party in 1978, forecasting the military coup d’état of Turkey in 1980, thousands of Kurdish and Turkish left-revolutionaries were jailed, leading many of the existing groups to lose their organizational structures.

However, the Kurdistan Workers' Party was able to withstand despite suffering many arrests including Mazlum Doğan. However, following imprisonment, the captured PKK members set up an elaborate resistance organization that would operate behind bars; this organization became famous for their hunger strikes. They smuggled in guns and communication equipment into prison. Recruitment and training became commonplace for imprisoned PKK members. In the fall of 1979, Mazlum Doğan had gone to Viransehir, Turkey to assemble the Kurds for political rights activism, he had planned on leaving Turkey and head towards Syria, but was arrested on September 30 over accusations of founding and leading the Kurdistan Workers' Party, what the Turkish coup d'etat labeled a terrorist organisation, taking part in the liberation of a comrade from a state hospital in Diyarbakır, identity

Zanthoxylum gilletii, the East African satin wood, is a tree species in the genus Zanthoxylum found in Africa. The fruits are used to produce the spice uzazi; the alkaloid nitidine can be isolated from the plant. The amide alkaloids N-octacosanamide, N-hexacosanamide, N-decanamide, N-vanilloyltyramine and N-tyramine can be isolated from the stem bark; the lignan sesamin, the N-isobutylamide γ-sanshool, the acridone alkaloids 1-hydroxy-3-methoxy-N-methylacridone, xanthoxoline and 1-hydroxy-3-methoxyacridone can be extracted from the bark as well as the alkaloids oblongine and magnoflorine and the flavonoid hesperidin. Http://www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/sea/products/afdbases/af/asp/SpeciesInfo.asp? SpID=17988