Portal:Agriculture

The Agriculture Portal

Ploughing rice paddies with water buffalo, in Indonesia.

Modern agriculture: a center pivot irrigation system on a field

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, 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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Free range chickens being fed outdoors

Poultry farming is the practice of raising domesticated birds such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, as a subcategory of animal husbandry, for the purpose of farming meat or eggs for food.

More than 50 billion chickens are raised annually as a source of food, for both their meat and their eggs. Chickens raised for meat are called broilers, while those raised for eggs are called laying hens. In total, the UK alone consumes over 29 million eggs per day. Some hens can produce over 300 eggs a year. Chickens will naturally live for 6 or more years. After 12 months, the hen’s productivity will start to decline. This is when most commercial laying hens are slaughtered.

The majority of poultry are raised using intensive farming techniques. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry meat, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way. One alternative to intensive poultry farming is free range farming.

Friction between these two main methods has led to long term issues of ethical consumerism. Opponents of intensive farming argue that it harms the environment and creates health risks, as well as abusing the animals themselves. Advocates of intensive farming say that their highly efficient systems save land and food resources due to increased productivity, stating that the animals are looked after in state-of-the-art environmentally controlled facilities. A few countries have banned cage system housing, including Sweden and Switzerland, yet consumers can still purchase lower cost eggs from other countries' intensive poultry farms. (Full article...)

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Credit: Hyena

A corn field (2006)

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General images

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

Image 1Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010 (from Livestock)
Image 2The creation of maize from teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) (from History of agriculture)
Image 3Sheep in Écrins National Park (France) (from Livestock)
Image 4A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
Image 5An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)
Image 6The 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 7This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
Image 8Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC (from History of agriculture)
Image 9Biomass distribution of humans, livestock, and other animals (from Livestock)
Image 10Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
Image 11Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
Image 12Roman 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 13Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
Image 14In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
Image 15Clay 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 16Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Image 17Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough (from History of agriculture)
Image 18Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes. (from History of agriculture)
Image 19Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 20Magnified 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 21Agricultural 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 22Ancient rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan (from History of agriculture)
Image 23Farrowing site in a natural cave in northern Spain (from Livestock)
Image 24The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
Image 25Centres 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 26Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 27Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
Image 28Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
Image 29Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
Image 30Origin and dispersal of domestic livestock species in the Fertile Crescent (dates Before Present). (from History of agriculture)
Image 31The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 32Selective 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 33Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States (from History of agriculture)
Image 34The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel – 1565 (from History of agriculture)
Image 35Cows on a pasture in Austria (from Livestock)
Image 36Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
Image 37Goat family with one-week-old kid (from Livestock)
Image 38Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay (from History of agriculture)
Image 39A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 40Yam festival in the Ashanti Empire. Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817 (from History of agriculture)
Image 41Noria 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 42Norman 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 43Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
Image 44Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (from History of agriculture)
Image 45An organic farmer, California, 1972 (from History of agriculture)
Image 46Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)

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WikiProject Agriculture

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References

↑ "Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook: Phytohaemagglutinin". Bad Bug Book. United States Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 2009-07-11.

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[FDA-1] "Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook: Phytohaemagglutinin". Bad Bug Book. United States Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 2009-07-11.

Agriculture
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