1.
Agricultural economics
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Agronomics was a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil ecosystem, throughout the 20th century the discipline expanded and the current scope of the discipline is much broader. Agricultural economics today includes a variety of applied areas, having considerable overlap with conventional economics, Agricultural economists have made substantial contributions to research in economics, econometrics, development economics, and environmental economics. Agricultural economics influences food policy, agricultural policy, and environmental policy, Economics has been defined as the study of resource allocation under scarcity. Agronomics, or the application of methods to optimizing the decisions made by agricultural producers. The field of economics can be traced out to works on land economics. Henry Charles Taylor was the greatest contributor with the establishment of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Wisconsin in 1909, another contributor,1979 Nobel Economics Prize winner Theodore Schultz, was among the first to examine development economics as a problem related directly to agriculture. The discipline was closely linked to applications of mathematical statistics and made early. The farm sector is frequently cited as a example of the perfect competition economic paradigm. In Asia, agricultural economics was offered first by the University of the Philippines Los Baños Department of Agricultural Economics in 1919, in addition to economists long-standing emphasis on the effects of prices and incomes, researchers in this field have studied how information and quality attributes influence consumer behavior. Agricultural economics research has addressed diminishing returns in agricultural production, as well as farmers costs, much research has applied economic theory to farm-level decisions. Development economics is concerned with the improvement of living conditions in low-income countries. The International Association of Agricultural Economists is a professional association. The association publishes the journal Agricultural Economics, there also is a European Association of Agricultural Economists, an African Association of Agricultural Economists and an Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. Substantial work in agricultural economics internationally is conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the AAEA publishes the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy. Careers in agricultural economics require at least a degree. A2011 study by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce rated agricultural economics tied for 8th out of 171 fields in terms of employability, evenson, Robert E. and Prabhu Pingali. Agrarian law Agrarian reform Agribusiness Agricultural value chain C. S, agency for International Development, Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade U. S
2.
Agricultural science
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The three terms are often confused. However, they cover different concepts, Agriculture is the set of activities that transform the environment for the production of animals, Agriculture concerns techniques, including the application of agronomic research. Agronomy is research and development related to studying and improving plant-based crops, food production and demand on a global basis, with special attention paid to the major producers, such as China, India, Brazil, the USA and the EU. It can be considered a science of ecoregions, because it is linked to soil properties and climate. Many people think an agricultural production system relying on local weather, soil characteristics, others feel a need to know and understand production systems in as many areas as possible, and the human dimension of interaction with nature. In the United States, a revolution in agriculture began with the Hatch Act of 1887. The Hatch Act was driven by farmers interest in knowing the constituents of early artificial fertilizer, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 shifted agricultural education back to its vocational roots, but the scientific foundation had been built. After 1906, public expenditures on agricultural research in the US exceeded private expenditures for the next 44 years, in fact, the interaction between these two approaches provide a fertile field for deeper understanding in agricultural science. Recent crises illustrate the complexity and importance of this debate,1977 Russell E.3, ju.2002 Saltini Antonio, Storia delle scienze agrarie,4 vols, Bologna 1984-89, ISBN 88-206-2412-5, ISBN 88-206-2413-3, ISBN 88-206-2414-1, ISBN 88-206-2415-X Vavilov Nicolai I. The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants, selected Writings, in Chronica botanica,13, 1-6, Waltham, Mass. Cinquante ans de recherches, Masson & c
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
8.
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
9.
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
10.
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
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