The Agriculture Portal
Panoramic view of Ötlingen from Southeast, the hilly landscape is typical for the region of Markgräflerland
Agriculture is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep, and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, while causing widespread 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 global warming, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and growth hormones in industrial meat production. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation and global warming, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some are banned in certain countries.
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, oils, meat, milk, fungi and eggs. Over one-third of the world's workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the service sector, although in recent decades, the global trend of a decreasing number of agricultural workers continues, especially in developing countries where smallholding is being overtaken by industrial agriculture and mechanization. (Full article...)
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Corn, turkeys, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and sunflower seeds constitute some of the major holdovers from the agricultural endowment of the Americas. European agricultural practices greatly affected the New England landscape, leaving behind many physical foot prints. Colonists brought livestock over from Europe which caused many changes to the land. Grazing animals required a lot of land and food to sustain them and due to grazing, native grasses were destroyed and European species began to replace them. New species of weeds were introduced and began to thrive as they were capable of withstanding the grazing of animals, whereas native species could not. In 2004, of the 145 million employed workers in the US, 834,000 of them held jobs as agricultural workers. 83% of these jobs were as farm workers. The median hourly income as of May 2004[update] was $7.70 for farmworkers planting, growing and harvesting crops, and $8.31 for farmworkers tending to animals. (Full article...)
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at the Salon de l'agriculture (Salon of agriculture) in Paris, France.
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General images
Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC (from History of agriculture)
Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
Goat family with 1-week-old kid (from Livestock)
This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution of the 1970s, is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. (from History of agriculture)
Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough (from History of agriculture)
Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
Selective 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)
Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010. (from Livestock)
Centres 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)
Agricultural 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)
The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel – 1565 (from History of agriculture)
Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)
Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Magnified 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)
An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)
Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
Clay 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)
Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay (from History of agriculture)
Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (from History of agriculture)
Roman harvesting machine, a vallus, from a Roman wall in Belgium, which was then part of the province of Gallia Belgica (from History of agriculture)
Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Ancient rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan (from History of agriculture)
A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Indigenous Australian camp by Skinner Prout, 1876 (from History of agriculture)
The 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)
Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
An organic farmer, California, 1972 (from History of agriculture)
Noria 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)
Sheep in the Parc National des Ecrins (France) (from Livestock)
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Agriculture journals
- Agronomy Journal - the American Society of Agronomy
- Agronomy for Sustainable Development Journal
- European Journal of Agronomy
- Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science
- Journal of Organic Systems
- Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment
- Agriculture and Human Values
- Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
- Precision Agriculture
- Experimental Agriculture
- Journal of Integrative Agriculture
- Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
- Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems
- Biological Agriculture & Horticulture
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