Portal:Agriculture

The Agriculture Portal

Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in 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 produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than 50 hectares (120 acres) and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres). However, 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. Farms and farming greatly influence rural economics and greatly shape rural society, effecting 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). 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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A rough map of agricultural regions in China

Agriculture is an important economic sector of China, employing over 300 million farmers. China ranks first in worldwide farm output, primarily producing rice, wheat, potatoes, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed, pork, and fish. Following the Communist Party of China's victory in the Chinese Civil War, control of the farmlands was taken away from landlords and redistributed to the 300 million peasant farmers. In 1952, gradually consolidating its power following the civil war, the government began organizing the peasants into teams. Three years later, these teams were combined into producer cooperatives, enacting the Socialist goal of collective land ownership. In the following year, 1956, the government formally took control of the land, further structuring the farmland into large government-operated collective farms.

As China continues to industrialize, vast swaths of agricultural land is being converted into industrial land. Farmers displaced by such urban expansion often become migrant labor for factories, but other farmers feel disenfranchised and cheated by the encroachment of industry and the growing disparity between urban and rural wealth and income.

The most recent innovation in Chinese agriculture is a push into organic agriculture. This rapid embrace of organic farming simultaneously serves multiple purposes, including food safety, health benefits, export opportunities, and by providing price premiums for the produce of rural communities, the adoption of organics can help stem the migration of rural workers to the cities. In the mid 1990s China became a net importer of grain, since its unsustainable practices of groundwater mining has effectively removed considerable land from productive agricultural use. (Full article...)

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A corn field (2006)

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

Image 1Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
Image 2Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 3The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel – 1565 (from History of agriculture)
Image 4An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)
Image 5Goat family with one-week-old kid (from Livestock)
Image 6Centres 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 7Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (from History of agriculture)
Image 8Biomass distribution of humans, livestock, and other animals (from Livestock)
Image 9The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 10Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
Image 11Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
Image 12Cattle on a pasture in Austria (from Livestock)
Image 13Ancient rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan (from History of agriculture)
Image 14The creation of maize from teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) (from History of agriculture)
Image 15Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
Image 16Clay 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 17Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)
Image 18Magnified 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 19A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
Image 20Noria 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 21In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
Image 22A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 23Yam festival in the Ashanti Empire. Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817. (from History of agriculture)
Image 24Indigenous Australian camp by Skinner Prout, 1876 (from History of agriculture)
Image 25Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC (from History of agriculture)
Image 26Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Image 27Agricultural 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 28Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
Image 29Sheep in Écrins National Park (France) (from Livestock)
Image 30The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
Image 31Farrowing site in a natural cave in northern Spain (from Livestock)
Image 32This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
Image 33Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes. (from History of agriculture)
Image 34Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay (from History of agriculture)
Image 35Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
Image 36Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010 (from Livestock)
Image 37Roman 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 38Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
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 40Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States. (from History of agriculture)
Image 41The 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 42Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
Image 43Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough (from History of agriculture)
Image 44Selective 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 45An organic farmer, California, 1972 (from History of agriculture)
Image 46Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)

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Occupations	Agriculturist Agricultural Engineer Farmer Farm worker Herder
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History	Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Austronesia Agricultural science Agricultural History Review Arab Agricultural Revolution Argentina Canada China Chile Columbian exchange Green Revolution Indian subcontinent Mesoamerica Middle Ages Neolithic Revolution Organic farming Palestine Peru United Kingdom British Agricultural Revolution Cheshire Scotland United States African-American California
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Environmental impact	Agricultural expansion Agricultural pollution Agricultural wastewater Overgrazing Environmental impact of irrigation Overdrafting Climate change and agriculture
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