Agriculture

Agriculture Definition

Agriculture Definition Detail

Agriculture is a form of industry which derives its products from living organisms, either plants or animals. Most agricultural activity takes place on farms and ranches. Specialized agricultural buildings usually house livestock, plant beds, or machinery, or they serve the specialized energy needs of an agricultural complex.
Until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the human population labored in agriculture. Pre-industrial agriculture was typically subsistence agriculture in which farmers raised most of their crops for their own consumption instead of for trade. A remarkable shift in agricultural practices has occurred over the past century in response to new technologies, and the development of world markets. This also led to technological improvements in agricultural techniques, such as the Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate which made the traditional practice of recycling nutrients with crop rotation and animal manure less necessary.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, and agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological improvements have sharply increased yields from cultivation, but at the same time have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects.
Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry such as intensive pig farming have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal cruelty and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production.

Agriculture Definition

Agricultural Production

Agricultural Production Detail

The primary sector of the economy is the sector of an economy making direct use of natural resources. This includes agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining, and extraction of oil and gas. This is contrasted with the secondary sector, producing manufactured and other processed goods, and the tertiary sector, producing services. The primary sector is usually most important in less developed countries, and typically less important in industrial countries.
The manufacturing industries that aggregate, pack, package, purify or process the raw materials close to the primary producers are normally considered part of this sector, especially if the raw material is unsuitable for sale or difficult to transport long distances.
Primary industry is a larger sector in developing countries; for instance, animal husbandry is more common in Africa than in Japan. Mining in 19th century South Wales is a case study of how an economy can come to rely on one form of business.

Agricultural Production

Agriculture Articles

Agriculture Articles Detail
Traditionally farming involves low levels of labor in relation to the land farmed. Here the inputs like seeds, man hours, organic fertilizers, and other farming allied resources as well as the output (yield) is relatively low as compared to intensive farming. Traditional farming methods like organic farming or extensive agriculture work on the premise to ensure health of the farm land in terms of its longevity, and a high natural nutrient value. The concept of resting the land after each harvest to give it time to recuperate itself through natural processes is also a major feature of sustainable agriculture. With a changing scenario in the population curve that has just been climbing upwards and the need to support them through a large yield, traditional farming practices were forced to make way for intensive farming.
The concept of intensive farming is not new, its indiscriminate use is. By 5000 BC, the Sumerians, who were highly practiced in the art of conducive agriculture had developed agricultural techniques that involved intensive farming, methods such as animal driven land cultivation, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, domestication of wild crop into edible ones, etc. The Middle Ages saw the use of hydraulic and hydrostatic principles for irrigating land; water-raising machines, dams and reservoirs, along with the three field system of crop rotation. A rapid rise in industrialization saw the Green Revolution in the late 19th and 20th centuries, where machines like the tractor were introduced to speed up the agricultural process.

Agriculture Articles

Agriculture

Thursday, 28 February 2013

Agriculture Definition

Agricultural Production

Agriculture Articles

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