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, or also cultivating other products such as flowers, ornamental plants and nursery plants , producing manure or dung, animal hides for 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 situated 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) most of their food from the wild. People may have started farming because the weather and the soil began to change. Farming can feed many more people than gathering on the same space 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 consists growing only enough food to feed the farmer, his family, and his animals. Extra food or animals are sold for money or to get other things the farmer cannot grow. The yield is the amount of food grown on a given space 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 fine in the short term, but can be bad for the country and the land in the long term.
In the richer 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 fertilizers, more water, and let less weeds and pests. Also, many farmers use machines, so they need fewer farmers. So, there are fewer farmers in the richer countries, but they produce more food. This kind of intensive agriculture also poses problems. Farmers use a lot of chemical fertilizers, pesticides (chemicals that kill bugs), and herbicides (chemicals that kill weeds), which amounts to stronger bugs and weeds. They sometimes pollute the soil or the water, which implies erosion (blowing or washing away), salt buildup, or loss of structure. Irrigation (adding water from rivers) can pollute water and be a strain to underground water. 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 the developing countries, and genetically modify these plants. They try to patent the seeds, and can sell them back to the local farmers.
[edit] Food
It is important to be able to provide enough food for everyone. The food must also be safe and of good quality. Some people say the food that is available 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 the poorer countries.
Intensive agriculture is mostly done in the western countries. It uses pesticides, machinery, chemical fertilizers. Organic farming uses only natural products. Integrated farming is using local resources, and trying to use the waste from one process as a resource for another process.
Agricultural policy focuses on the goals and methods of agricultural production. As for policy , the common goals of agriculture include:
Food safety: making sure that the food supply is safe and healthy. Food security: making sure there is enough food for everyone. Food quality: making sure the food is of good quality.
[edit] Problems in agriculture
The agriculture practised since the post-war period does not respect the planet because it induces pollution and an indiscriminate overuse of natural resources. We produce too much compared to our needs, besides “fertilization” and the “protection of the plants” are the only words are recurring mottos. Even if the tendency has been to develop a reasoned agriculture these last few years, much remains to be done. The soil is seen as a tool and not as a living resource in which minerals, water, animals, mushrooms, roots, bacteria and other living organisms belong to constitute thriving ecosystem and underground life is ignored. The soil is not only able to absorb manures and rock salt, it is life in the making… The idea of taking into account of the biotope of the culture led to the concepts of integrated agriculture (developing : it implies using all that is available, including chemicals but also all alternative methods) and organic agriculture which respects norms : the products must abide by criteria concerning public health but also the environment : industrial chemicals are banned. The common use of hybrid varieties, the mechanization of harvests, contribute to biological and chemical pollution, not to mention the issue of energy shortages… The culture of genetically modified represented 90 million hectares in 21 counties in 2005. Factory farming is based on the concentration of cattle and is awful source of pollution instead of producing manure, the use of antibiotics and industrial food instead of natural fodder is a dramatic health hazard for the consumer. Agriculture is not thought in local terms, but today, it aims at making profits, regardless of future consequences, some areas specialize in one only culture or type of breeding, which kills biodiversity. In many areas no vegetables are grown. Alternative solutions exist to provide healthy local food.
[edit] Crops
The most grown crops produced in the world (as of 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
Some producers specialize in one activity and raise less common types of livestock or practice monoculture.
Aquaculture, or aquafarming, fish farming consists in producing fish or algae, it is closely associated with agriculture.
Apiculture, or beekeeping is important both to produce honey, and to ensure crop pollination.
Husbandry means breeding and raising animals for meat or animal products (such as milk, eggs, or wool), or growing cereals and vegetables in a more sustainable way.
[edit] See also
[edit] Internal links
- Permaculture
- wild food
- natural agriculture
- organic agriculture
- lunar cycles
- Bio seeds
- Mulching
- composting
- cereals
- wwoofing
- Square foot gardening
- Agricultural tool
[edit] External links
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