The story of how agriculture was born

Till about 10,000 B.C., people were nomadic (The people who have no permanent homes and continuously move from one place to another are called nomads). They were continuously moving in groups from place to place in search of food and shelter. These nomadic people ate raw fruits and vegetables found in nature and started hunting animals for food. Later, they settled near water bodies such as lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. to grow wheat, paddy and other food crops. This is how agriculture was born.

Agriculture

The growing of plants (or crops) in fields for obtaining food is called agriculture.

Crop

When the same kind of plants are grown in the fields on a large scale to obtain foods like cereals(wheat, rice, maize), pulses, vegetables and fruits, etc., it is called a crop.

Based on the practices and area of cultivation and other, factors agriculture can be categorised into:

Subsistence Farming

Intensive Cultivation

Extensive Cultivation

Organic Farming

Mixed farming

Horticulture

Sericulture

Pisciculture

Apiculture

Truck farming

Mushroom Culture

Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus

on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families.

The land is limited and the cultivation systems are primitive and there is very little surplus to sell. For example if the total yield is 20 kilograms then only 2 to 3 kilograms will be left for selling.

Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of rural Africa, and parts of Asia and Latin America. Subsistence agriculture had largely disappeared in Europe by the beginning of World War I, and in North America.

Some of these peoples moved from site to site as they exhausted the soil at each location.

As urban centres grew, agricultural production became more specialized and commercial farming developed, with farmers producing a sizable surplus of certain crops, which they traded for manufactured goods or sold for cash.

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Intensive agriculture, in agricultural economics, system of cultivation using large amounts of labour and capital relative to land area.

Large amounts of labour and capital are necessary to the application of fertilizer insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides to growing crops, and capital is particularly important to the acquisition and maintenance of high-efficiency machinery for planting, cultivating, and harvesting, as well as

irrigation equipment where that is required.

Multiple cropping is common and high yielding varieties of crops are grown mainly for commercial purposes.

Wheat, rice and sugar cane are important crops.

It is common in the Indian Sub-Continent, China , Japan and Korea.

Extensive agriculture or Extensive Cultivation is a system of crop cultivation using small amounts of labour and capital in relation to area of land being farmed. The crop yield in extensive agriculture depends primarily on the natural fertility of the soil, the terrain, the climate, and the availability of water.

It is done on very large farms, up to thousands of acres in size. The use of machinery and scientific methods of farming produce a large quantity of crops.

Wheat cultivation and cattle ranching are main activities here.

But the yield is very less per acre as compared to the overall production is very large.

It is a type of commercial agriculture.

Extensive Cultivation is common in the Prairies of the USA and Canada, Australia and Argentina.

A plantation is a long, artificially-established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption.

Plantations are developed on a large scale as the crops are grown for commercial purposes, not for local consumption.

It is normally a single crop cultivation. This type of cultivation was introduced in 19th century.

There is a factory on the farm to process the raw product. Crops grown on plantations include fast growing tress often conifers. E.g. Tea, coffee, bananas, rubber, sugar cane, pineapple, etc.

These are grown using scientific methods on specially managed estates .

Rubber in Malaysia, tea in India and coffee in Brazil are well known examples of plantation farming.

As the name suggests , in this type of farming no chemical compounds are used, only natural organic compounds are used.

It relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost, and biological pest control.

Organic farming uses fertilizers and pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides , fungicides and weedicides).

It is like a natural system, in which crops are allowed to grow naturally by providing them with naturally prepared manures, and capital.

In this system no genetic modification is used for the enhancement of the crop yield.

Organic farming is practised around the globe, but the markets for sale are strongest in North America and Europe.

When on a farm along-with crop production, some other agriculture based practice like poultry, dairy farming or bee keeping etc. is adopted, then this system of farming is known as mixed farming.

Mixed farming is an agricultural system that mixes farming with the raising of livestock.

Indian farmers would have a patch for the cultivation of vegetables, a fruit or vegetable orchard, a poultry farm and a cattle of cows and goats on their farmland.

Advanced countries like USA, Germany, Japan, Australia and others practice this type of farming on a commercial scale on a large farm.

The farms that are located on the outskirts of big cities produce all kinds of fresh fruits ,vegetables. These are sent to the cities by trucks on a daily basis.

This type of farming is called truck farming.

Mainly, this type of farming is used for commercial purposes.

Flowers are also cultivated in truck farms. The cultivation of flowers is known as horticulture.

This type of farming is found everywhere in the world, especially in developed or advanced countries, like USA, Canada, etc.

We all use dairy products in our daily life. All these products come from dairies.

Therefore, the rearing of cattle, sheep and goats for the production of milk, butter, cheese, cream, and other dairy products is called dairy farming.

In this type of farming the farmers have cattle on the farm. Some farmers produce other products also.

In India very few large farms have been set up; in states such as Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

The places where farmers have relatively less area for farming, they form groups or cooperatives.

The type of farming in which farmers have a mutual joint of farming between them is referred as cooperative farming.

In areas where people have unviable small pieces of land found that a mutual joint of farming is profitable on the basis of cooperative activity.

This type of farming is practised in countries like Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark (Greenland) and the Netherlands.

In India Cooperative Farming is mainly found in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

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