Portal:Agriculture
Wikipedia portal for content related to Agriculture / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portal maintenance status: (June 2018)
|
The Agriculture Portal
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry for food and non-food products. 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. 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.
, 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 fibres 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...)
Selected article
Based on the average annual minimum temperature for a given location, the USDA map provides an easy guideline for categorizing locations suitable for winter survival of a rated plant in an "average" winter. Since temperatures in the non-coastal-adjacent areas of the continent rarely present a consistent experience from year to year, and occasionally present a major—and often agriculturally devastating—deviation from the average minimum, the map has limitations for much of the country as a basis for using with long-term reliability, at least in areas close to the margin of a plant's rated hardiness-zone.
In 2003, the American Horticultural Society (AHS) produced a draft revised map, using temperature data collected from July 1986 to March 2002. This was a period of warmer winters than the 1974–1986 period, especially in the eastern U.S.A. The 2003 map placed many areas approximately a half-zone higher (warmer) than the 1990 map had. Reviewers noted the map zones appeared to be closer to the original 1960 map in its overall zone delineations. The 2003 AHS draft map purported to show finer detail, for example, reflecting urban heat islands by showing the downtown areas of several cities (e.g., Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Atlantic City, New Jersey) as a full zone warmer than outlying areas. The map excluded the detailed a/b half-zones introduced in the 1990 map, an omission widely criticized by horticulturists and gardeners due to the coarseness of the resulting map. The USDA rejected the AHS 2003 draft map; the agency stated it would create its own map in an interactive computer format. As of August 2010 the AHS and the National Arboretum websites still present the 1990 map as current. In 2006, the US National Arbor Day Foundation completed an extensive updating of U.S. Hardiness Zones. It used essentially the same data as the AHS. Once the Foundation analyzed the new data, it revised hardiness zones, reflecting the generally warmer recent temperatures in many parts of the country. The Foundation's 2006 map appears to validate the data used in the AHS 2003 draft. The Foundation also did away with the more detailed a/b half-zone delineations. (Full article...)
Selected image
Did you know...
... Some kelp species can grow about 1 foot (30 cm) per day? |
Other "Did you know" facts... | Read more... |
General images
- Image 1Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 2Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
- Image 9Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
- Image 10Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
- Image 11An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 13The 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 15Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)
- Image 16Goat family with one-week-old kid (from Livestock)
- Image 17The creation of maize from teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) (from History of agriculture)
- Image 18This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
- Image 19Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 20The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
- Image 21In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
- Image 22Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010 (from Livestock)
- Image 23Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
- Image 24Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
- Image 25A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
- Image 26Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 28A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
- Image 29The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 30Biomass distribution of humans, livestock, and other animals (from Livestock)
- Image 31Clay 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 32Norman 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 33Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)
- Image 34Agricultural 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 35Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
- Image 37Centres 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 38Magnified 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 39Livestock production requires large areas of land.
- Image 42Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
- Image 43Selective 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 44Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes. (from History of agriculture)
- Image 45Roman 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 46Noria 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)
Related portals
Topics
Categories
Things you can do
|
Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
|
- – When a task is completed, please remove it from the list.
WikiProjects
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
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
See also: