Portal:Agriculture

The Agriculture Portal

Agriculture is the practice of cultivating the soil, planting, raising, and harvesting both food and non-food crops, as well as livestock production. Broader definitions also include forestry and aquaculture. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated plants and animals created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.

As of 2021^[update], small farms, of which the vast majority are one hectare (about 2.5 acres) or smaller, produce about one-third of the world's food. Moreover, five of every six farms in the world consist of fewer than 2 hectares (4.9 acres) and take up only around 12% of all agricultural land. In terms of total land use, large farms are dominant. While only 1% of all farms globally are greater than 50 hectares (120 acres), they encompass more than 70% of the world's farmland. Further, nearly 40% of all global agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres).

Farms and farming greatly influence rural economics and greatly shape rural society, affecting both the direct agricultural workforce and broader businesses that support the farms and farming populations.

The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber and timber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, meat, milk, eggs, and fungi. Global agricultural production amounts to approximately 11 billion tonnes of food, 32 million tonnes of natural fibers and 4 billion m³ of wood. However, around 14% of the world's food is lost from production before reaching the retail level.

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, but also contributed to ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to climate change, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and climate change, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some countries ban them. (Full article...)

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Sustainable agriculture is farming in a way that reduces environmental harm, aids and expands natural resources and ensures that non-renewable resources are harnessed for productive purposes. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within the sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business processes and farming practices.

Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change (food systems are responsible for one third of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions), water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without causing damage to human or natural systems. It involves preventing adverse effects on soil, water, biodiversity, and surrounding or downstream resources, as well as to those working or living on the farm or in neighboring areas. Elements of sustainable agriculture can include permaculture, agroforestry, mixed farming, multiple cropping, and crop rotation. Land sparing, which combines conventional intensive agriculture with high yields and the protection of natural habitats from conversion to farmland, can also be considered a form of sustainable agriculture. (Full article...)

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Grain elevator

Credit: Jonathunder

An old grain elevator in Estherville, Iowa

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Did you know...

... the indigenous Gunditjmara people in Victoria, Australia may have raised eels as early as 6000 BC? There is evidence that they developed about 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) of volcanic floodplains in the vicinity of Lake Condah into a complex of channels and dams, that they used woven traps to capture eels, and that capturing and smoking eels supported them year round.^[1]^[2]

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General images

The following are images from various agriculture-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Roman harvesting machine, a vallus, from a Roman wall in Belgium, which was then part of the province of Gallia Belgica (from History of agriculture)
Image 2An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)
Image 3Biomass distribution of humans, livestock, and other animals (from Livestock)
Image 4Ancient rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan (from History of agriculture)
Image 5Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
Image 6Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010 (from Livestock)
Image 7Magnified 100X, and stained with H&E (hematoxylin and eosin) staining technique, this light photomicrograph of brain tissue reveals the presence of prominent spongiotic changes in the cortex, and loss of neurons in a case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 8Selective breeding enlarged desired traits of the wild cabbage plant (Brassica oleracea) over hundreds of years, resulting in dozens of today's agricultural crops. Cabbage, kale, broccoli, and cauliflower are all cultivars of this plant. (from Plant breeding)
Image 9In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
Image 10A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
Image 11This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
Image 12Origin and dispersal of domestic livestock species in the Fertile Crescent (dates Before Present). (from History of agriculture)
Image 13A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 14Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)
Image 15Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 16Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC (from History of agriculture)
Image 17Agricultural scenes of threshing, a grain store, harvesting with sickles, digging, tree-cutting and ploughing from Ancient Egypt. Tomb of Nakht, 15th century BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 18The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 19Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
Image 20Centres of origin identified by Nikolai Vavilov in the 1930s. Area 3 (grey) is no longer recognised as a centre of origin, and Papua New Guinea (red, 'P') was identified more recently. (from History of agriculture)
Image 21Yam festival in the Ashanti Empire. Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817 (from History of agriculture)
Image 22Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States (from History of agriculture)
Image 23Noria wheels to lift water for irrigation and household use were among the technologies introduced to Europe via Al-Andalus in the medieval Islamic world. (from History of agriculture)
Image 24Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (from History of agriculture)
Image 25Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
Image 26Clay and wood model of a bull cart carrying farm produce in large pots, Mohenjo-daro. The site was abandoned in the 19th century BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 27Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
Image 28The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
Image 29Cows on a pasture in Austria (from Livestock)
Image 30Goat family with one-week-old kid (from Livestock)
Image 31Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough (from History of agriculture)
Image 32Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Image 33The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel – 1565 (from History of agriculture)
Image 34An organic farmer, California, 1972 (from History of agriculture)
Image 35Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
Image 36Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes. (from History of agriculture)
Image 37Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
Image 38Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 39Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution of the 1970s, is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. (from History of agriculture)
Image 40The creation of maize from teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) (from History of agriculture)
Image 41Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
Image 42Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
Image 43The Yecoro wheat (right) cultivar is sensitive to salinity, plants resulting from a hybrid cross with cultivar W4910 (left) show greater tolerance to high salinity (from Plant breeding)
Image 44Farrowing site in a natural cave in northern Spain (from Livestock)
Image 45Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay (from History of agriculture)
Image 46Sheep in (Europe) (from Livestock)

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Agronomy Journal - the American Society of Agronomy

References

↑ Aborigines may have farmed eels, built huts ABC Science News, 13 March 2003.
↑ Lake Condah Sustainability Project. Retrieved 18 February 2010.

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[1] Aborigines may have farmed eels, built huts ABC Science News, 13 March 2003.

[2] Lake Condah Sustainability Project. Retrieved 18 February 2010.

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