Agriculture
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| This article is part of the Food theme. Alimentation |
Agriculture is the growing of crops or keeping of animals by people for food and raw materials. Agriculture is also called farming.
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[edit] Overview
Agriculture is growing food for people and animals, and also other things, like flowers, ornamental plants and nursery plants , manure or dung, animal hides leather, industrial chemicals (starch, ethanol, and plastics), fibers (cotton, wool, hemp, and flax), fuels (methane, biodiesel, biomass), and drugs (biopharmaceuticals, marijuana, opium)
Agriculture may have started more than 10,000 years ago, but no one knows for sure how old it is. Agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent in East Asia. The area called Fertile Crescent is now in the countries of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. Wheat and barley are some of the first crops people grew. People probably started agriculture slowly by planting a few crops, but still gathered (got) many foods from the wild. People may have started farming because the weather and soil began to change. Farming can feed many more people than gathering on the same amount of land.
Many people live by doing what is called subsistence agriculture, on a small farm. Only the farmer's family lives on the farm. Subsistence agriculture is growing only enough food to feed the farmer, his family, and his animals. Extra food or animals are sold for money or other things the farmer cannot grow. The yields is the amount of food grown on a given amount of land, and the yield is often low, because subsistence farmers are less educated, and they have less money to buy equipment. When yields are low, forests are sometimes cut to provide new land to grow food. This is good in the short term, but can be bad for the country and the land in the long term.
In rich countries, farms are often much larger and the yield on farms has gotten bigger in the last one hundred years, because farmers grow better varieties of plants, use more fertilizer, use more water, and have less weeds and pests. Also, many farms use machines, so they need fewer farmers. So, there are fewer farmers in rich countries, but they produce more food. This kind of intensive agriculture also makes problems. Farmers use a lot of chemical fertilizers, pesticides (chemicals that kill bugs), and herbicides (chemicals that kill weeds). They sometimes pollute the soil or the water. They sometimes create stronger bugs and weeds. The soil is sometimes damaged by erosion (blowing or washing away), salt buildup, or loss of structure. Irrigation (adding water from rivers) can pollute water and lower the water table. Having fewer farmers also changes society and can make a country less able to feed itself in bad times.
Farmers selected plants with better yield, more resistance to disease, more tolerance to drought, easier to harvest, with better taste, and better nutritional value. Centuries of careful selection and breeding have had enormous effects on the characteristics of crop plants. The crops give better yield with other techniques (use of fertilizers, chemical pest control, irrigation).
Some companies have been searching for new plants in poor countries, and genetically modify these plants. They try to patent the seeds, and can sell them back in the poor countries.
[edit] Food
It is important for there to be enough food for everyone. The food must also be safe and of good quality. Some people say the food is not always good. They say it is sometimes not safe, because it contains some chemicals. Other people say intensive agriculture is damaging the environment. For this reason, there are several types of agriculture.
Traditional agriculture is mostly done in poor countries.
Intensive agriculture is mostly done in western countries. It uses pesticides, machinery, chemical fertilizers. Organic farming is using only natural products. Integrated farming is using local resources, and trying to use the waste from one process as a resource in another process.
Agricultural policy focuses on the goals and methods of agricultural production. At the policy level, common goals of agriculture include:
Food safety: to be sure that the food supply is safe. Food security: to be sure there is enough food for everyone. Food quality: to be sure the food is of good quality.
[edit] Problems in agriculture
The agriculture practised since the post-war period does not respect the Earth, it empties it and pollutes it. Moreover, it is not “total”. We produce too much compared to our needs, and “fertilization” and “protection of the plants” are the only words which one hears. Even if the tendency has been to be developed a agriculture reasoned for a few years, much remains to be made. The grounds are regarded a support and not as a medium in which the minerals, water, the atmospheres, the animals, the mushrooms, the roots, the bacteria and others belong to all the beauty and the underground life. Ground is not only able to absorb manures and rock salt, it is able to well better do… This taking into account of the environment of the culture brought developed the concept D ' integrated agriculture (little developed) and D ' agriculture biological . *L' biological agriculture answers a schedule of conditions envisaging the use of products of fight (pesticides and manure) certified usable in biological agriculture, often of natural origin, or resulting from biological agriculture but also all the farming methods of fight alternatives. *L' integrated agriculture uses all the means available (produced of chemical fight) but also all the alternative methods. The vegetable cultures too often use hybrid varieties, harvests are mechanized too much, whereas it is necessary to think of energy autonomy… The cultures GMO develop, they covered 90 million hectares in 21 country in 2005. The intensive breeding concentrates the cattle and does not know any more what to make of sound manure, uses antibiotics into preventive, feeds the cattle so that it produces. Agriculture is not thought like local, but today, with theoretical policies not taking account of the future and supporting competition, in the areas even countries specialize in certain productions. There is no more production of vegetables in many areas. For a right to a healthy food, varied, accessible locally, solutions however exist. Here we will try to reflect on techniques for a réconstruction of the respectful agriculture of our environment.
[edit] See also
- Permaculture
- wild food
- natural agriculture
- organic agriculture
- lunar cycles
- Bio seeds
- green manures
- composting
- cereals
- wwoofing
- Square foot gardening
- Agricultural tools
[edit] Webographie
- http://www.detectivesOGM.org
- http://www.agrireseau.qc.ca/agriculturebiologique/documents/Brochure%20fertilisation15nov.pdf
[edit] Bibliographie
[edit] Crops
The major crops produced in the world in 2002, are maize (corn), wheat, rice, and cotton.
- Maize 624 millions of metric tons
- Wheat 570 millions of metric tons
- Rice 381.1 millions of metric tons
- Cotton 96.5 millions of metric tons
There are speciality producers who raise less common types of livestock or plants.
Aquaculture, the farming of fish, shrimp, and algae, is closely associated with agriculture.
Apiculture, the culture of bees, traditionally for honey, increasingly for crop pollination.
Animal husbandry means breeding and raising animals for meat or to harvest animal products (like milk, eggs, or wool) on a continual basis.
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