Tuesday, January 12, 2016

what is agriculture




Agriculture
The Modern Agriculture : A Normative Critique. 
 Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, bio fuel, medicinal and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. In the civilized world, industrial agriculture based on large-scale mono culture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology.

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agro chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have in many cases 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 have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production. Genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts. Significant degradation of land and water resources, including the depletion of aquifers, has been observed in recent decades, and the effects of global warming on agriculture and of agriculture on global warming are still not fully understood.
The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats and spices. Fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo. Other useful materials are produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, bio fuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. Over one third of the world's workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the services' sector, although the percentages of agricultural workers in developed countries has decreased significantly over the past several centuries.

Etymology and terminology  
The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricult?ra, from ager, "field", and cult?ra, "cultivation" or "growing". Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use natural resources to "produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services." A distinction is sometimes made between forestry and agriculture, based on the former's longer management rotations, extensive versus intensive management practices and development mainly by nature, rather than by man. Even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture  and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry.
History  
Agriculture and civilization  
Civilization was the product of the Agricultural Neolithic Revolution. In the course of history, civilization coincided in space with fertile areas  and most intensive state formation took place in circumscribed agricultural lands . The Great Wall of China and the Roman limes demarcated the same northern frontier of the basic  agriculture. This cereal belt nourished the belt of great civilizations formed in the Axial Age and connected by the famous Silk Road.
Ancient Egyptians, whose agriculture depended exclusively on Nile, deified the River, worshiped, and exalted in a great hymn. The Chinese imperial court issued numerous edicts, stating: "Agriculture is the foundation of this Empire." Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Inca Emperors themselves plowed ceremonial fields in order to show personal example to everyone. "Thus the most exalted men in human history—the Beloved of the Gods, the Son of Sun, the Son of Heaven, and Inca—although ceremonially but nonetheless personally tilled the earth."
Ancient strategists, Chinese Guan Zhong and Shang Yang and Indian Kautilya, drew doctrines linking agriculture with military power. Agriculture defined the limits on how large and for how long an army could be mobilized. Shang Yang called agriculture and war the One. In the vast human pantheon of agricultural deities there are several deities who combined the functions of agriculture and war. Great granaries were the inevitable feature of great empires.
As the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution produced civilization, the modern Agricultural Revolution, begun in Britain, made possible the Industrial civilization. The first precondition for industry was greater yields by less manpower, resulting in greater percentage of manpower available for non-agricultural sectors. The most industrial world appeared in the most fertile cereal regions of the world. Today's Industrial North  originally was the belt of civilizations formed in the Axial Age.
The link between the basic  agriculture and military power survived in the Industrial Age too. All modern great powers were first of all great cereal powers, as had been the greatest of their predecessors. The cereal domestic product closely correlates with the Gross Domestic Product and it was argued that the cereal product is the basis of the GDP. The Cold War was waged between two cereal superpowers.The outcome of the Cold War corresponds to the cereal factor too—the United States produced its agricultural miracle, while the USSR suffered a progressive cereal crisis. In 1976, French sociologist Emmanuel Todd, impressed by the magnitude of Soviet grain purchases, predicted the collapse of the USSR within ten years.
Contemporary agriculture  
In the past century agriculture has been characterized by increased productivity, the substitution of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for labor, water pollution, and farm subsidies. In recent years there has been a backlash against the external environmental effects of conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic and sustainable agriculture movements. One of the major forces behind this movement has been the European Union, which first certified organic food in 1991 and began reform of its Common Agricultural Policy  in 2005 to phase out commodity-linked farm subsidies, also known as decoupling. The growth of organic farming has renewed research in alternative technologies such as integrated pest management and selective breeding. Recent mainstream technological developments include genetically modified food.
In 2007, higher incentives for farmers to grow non-food biofuel crops combined with other factors, such as overdevelopment of former farm lands, rising transportation costs, climate change, growing consumer demand in China and India, and population growth, caused food shortages in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Mexico, as well as rising food prices around the globe. As of December 2007, 37 countries faced food crises, and 20 had imposed some sort of food-price controls. Some of these shortages resulted in food riots and even deadly stampedes. The International Fund for Agricultural Development posits that an increase in smallholder agriculture may be part of the solution to concerns about food prices and overall food security. They in part base this on the experience of Vietnam, which went from a food importer to large food exporter and saw a significant drop in poverty, due mainly to the development of smallholder agriculture in the country.
Disease and land degradation are two of the major concerns in agriculture today. For example, an epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by the Ug 99 lineage is currently spreading across Africa and into Asia and is causing major concerns due to crop losses of 70% or more under some conditions. Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.
Agrarian structure is a long-term structure in the Braudelian understanding of the concept. On a larger scale the agrarian structure is more dependent on the regional, social, cultural and historical factors than on the state’s undertaken activities. Like in Poland, where despite running an intense agrarian policy for many years, the agrarian structure in 2002 has much in common with that found in 1921 soon after the partitions period.
In 2009, the agricultural output of China was the largest in the world, followed by the European Union, India and the United States, according to the International Monetary Fund . Economists measure the total factor productivity of agriculture and by this measure agriculture in the United States is roughly 1.7 times more productive than it was in 1948.
Workforce  
, the International Labour Organization states that approximately one billion people, or over 1/3 of the available work force, are employed in the global agricultural sector. Agriculture constitutes approximately 70% of the global employment of children, and in many countries employs the largest percentage of women of any industry. The number of people employed in agriculture varies widely on a per-country basis, ranging from less than 2% in countries like the US and Canada to over 80% in many African nations. In developed countries, these figures are significantly lower than in previous centuries. During the 16th century in Europe, for example, between 55 and 75 percent of the population was engaged in agriculture, depending on the country. By the 19th century in Europe, this had dropped to between 35 and 65 percent. In the same countries today, the figure is less than 10%. Pesticides and other chemicals used in farming can also be hazardous to worker health, and workers exposed to pesticides may experience illness or have children with birth defects. As an industry in which families commonly share in work and live on the farm itself, entire families can be at risk for injuries, illness, and death. Common causes of fatal injuries among young farm workers include drowning, machinery and motor vehicle-related accidents. It estimates that the annual work-related death toll among agricultural employees is at least 170,000, twice the average rate of other jobs. In addition, incidences of death, injury and illness related to agricultural activities often go unreported. The organization has developed the Safety and Health in Agriculture Convention, 2001, which covers the range of risks in the agriculture occupation, the prevention of these risks and the role that individuals and organizations engaged in agriculture should play.
Shifting cultivation  is a system in which forests are burnt, releasing nutrients to support cultivation of annual and then perennial crops for a period of several years. Then the plot is left fallow to regrow forest, and the farmer moves to a new plot, returning after many more years . This fallow period is shortened if population density grows, requiring the input of nutrients  and some manual pest control. Annual cultivation is the next phase of intensity in which there is no fallow period. This requires even greater nutrient and pest control inputs.
Further industrialization led to the use of mono cultures, when one cultivar is planted on a large acreage. Because of the low biodiversity, nutrient use is uniform and pests tend to build up, necessitating the greater use of pesticides and fertilizers., 30% of Earth's ice- and water-free area was used for producing livestock, with the sector employing approximately 1.3 billion people. Between the 1960 s and the 2000 s, there was a significant increase in livestock production,

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