Portal:Agriculture

The Agriculture Portal

Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor 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.

As of 2021^[update], 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, affecting 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 fibers 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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Sow with piglet

The domestic pig (also swine, in some areas hog) is a domesticated animal that traces its ancestry to the wild boar, and is considered a subspecies of the wild boar or a distinct species in its own right. It is likely the wild boar was domesticated as early as 13,000 BC in the Tigris River basin. Pigs are farmed for the consumption of their flesh, but some cultures have religious dietary laws that forbid the consumption of pig meat. The animal's bones, hide, and bristles have been fashioned into items for human use such as brushes, and pigs have been kept as pets, especially the pot bellied pig. Miss Piggy, Babe, and Porky the Pig represent the domestic pig in entertainment and "The Three Little Pigs", Charlotte's Web, and The Sheep-Pig are prominent examples of the domestic pig in literature.

Most domestic pigs have rather sparse hair covering on their skin, although woolly coated breeds, such as the Mangalitsa, are raised. Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 BC in the Near East in the Tigris Basin being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans. Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BC in Cyprus that must have been introduced from the mainland which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then. There was also a separate domestication in China. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected image

Holstein cattle

Credit: U.S. Federal Government

Holstein cattle, a breed of cattle known today as the world's highest production dairy animal.

More selected pictures

Did you know...

... the indigenous Gunditjmara people in Victoria, Australia may have raised eels as early as 6000 BC? There is evidence that they developed about 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) of volcanic floodplains in the vicinity of Lake Condah into a complex of channels and dams, that they used woven traps to capture eels, and that capturing and smoking eels supported them year round.^[1]^[2]

Other "Did you know" facts...

Read more...

General images

The following are images from various agriculture-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Bt-toxins in genetically modified peanut leaves (bottom) protect from damage by corn borers (top). (from History of agriculture)
Image 2The 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 3Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific (from History of agriculture)
Image 4Cattle on a pasture in Austria (from Livestock)
Image 5Garton's catalogue from 1902 (from Plant breeding)
Image 6A Fordson Dexta tractor with a rollover protection structure bar retro-fitted. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 7An organic farmer, California, 1972 (from History of agriculture)
Image 8Domesticated animals on a Sumerian cylinder seal, 2500 BC (from History of agriculture)
Image 9Ancient rice terraces in Yuanyang County, Yunnan (from History of agriculture)
Image 10Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field (from History of agriculture)
Image 11Yam festival in the Ashanti Empire. Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817. (from History of agriculture)
Image 12Indigenous Australian camp by Skinner Prout, 1876 (from History of agriculture)
Image 13In vitro-culture of Vitis (grapevine), Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute (from Plant breeding)
Image 14Biomass distribution of humans, livestock, and other animals (from Livestock)
Image 15Magnified 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 16Wichita village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States. (from History of agriculture)
Image 17Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010 (from Livestock)
Image 18Pesticide application for chemical control of nematodes in a sunflower planted field. Karaisalı, Adana - Turkey. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 19This Australian road sign uses the less common term "stock" for livestock. (from Livestock)
Image 20Pigs being loaded into their transport (from Livestock)
Image 21Sumerian harvester's sickle, 3000 BC, made from baked clay (from History of agriculture)
Image 22Ploughing with a yoke of horned cattle in Ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (from History of agriculture)
Image 23Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi (from History of agriculture)
Image 24Sheep in Écrins National Park (France) (from Livestock)
Image 25Clay 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 26Centres 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 27Norman 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 28A Northern Song era (960–1127 AD) Chinese watermill for dehusking grain with a horizontal waterwheel (from History of agriculture)
Image 29Modern facilities in molecular biology are now used in plant breeding. (from Plant breeding)
Image 30The agriculturalist Charles 'Turnip' Townshend introduced four-field crop rotation and the cultivation of turnips. (from History of agriculture)
Image 31Jethro Tull's seed drill, invented in 1701 (from History of agriculture)
Image 32Agriculture terraces were (and are) common in the austere, high-elevation environment of the Andes. (from History of agriculture)
Image 33Agricultural research on potato plants (from Plant breeding)
Image 34Roman 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 35Native millet, Panicum decompositum, was planted and harvested by Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia. (from History of agriculture)
Image 36Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Image 37Goat family with one-week-old kid (from Livestock)
Image 38Farrowing site in a natural cave in northern Spain (from Livestock)
Image 39The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel – 1565 (from History of agriculture)
Image 40Inca farmers using a human-powered foot plough (from History of agriculture)
Image 41The creation of maize from teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) (from History of agriculture)
Image 42Noria 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)
Image 43The Occupational Safety & Health Administration logo. (from Agricultural safety and health)
Image 44Agricultural 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 45Selective 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 46An Indian farmer with a rock-weighted scratch plough pulled by two oxen. Similar ploughs were used throughout antiquity. (from History of agriculture)

Related portals

Topics

Books

Things you can do

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Fish production principles
Expand : Agricultural land, Agricultural cycle, Agricultural education, Agrobiology, Agronomist, Agroforestry, Food and Agriculture Organization, Agricultural organization, Fungiculture, Fodder, Fish emulsion, more...
Photo : Fungiculture, Nematodes
Verify : Agriculture, forestry, and fishing in Japan
Other : Categories to cleanup: Category:Agriculture

– When a task is completed, please remove it from the list.

WikiProjects

WikiProject Agriculture

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

Pen & Earth

Agronomy Journal - the American Society of Agronomy

References

^ Aborigines may have farmed eels, built huts ABC Science News, 13 March 2003.
^ Lake Condah Sustainability Project. Retrieved 18 February 2010.

More portals

Discover Wikipedia using portals

purge server cache

[1] Aborigines may have farmed eels, built huts ABC Science News, 13 March 2003.

[2] Lake Condah Sustainability Project. Retrieved 18 February 2010.

[1]

[2]

v t e Agriculture
Outline History Index
Occupations	Agriculturist Agricultural Engineer Farmer Farm worker Herder
General	Agribusiness Agricultural cooperative Agricultural supplies Agricultural science Agricultural engineering Agricultural technology Digital Biotechnology Agroforestry Agronomy Animal husbandry Animal-free agriculture Cash crop Cellular agriculture Cultural methods Contract farming Extensive farming Farm Farmhouse Feed ratio Free range Horticulture Intensive farming animals pigs crops Mechanised agriculture Organic farming Paludiculture Permaculture Plantation Polyculture Rice-duck farming Rice-fish system Sustainable agriculture Sustainable food system Universities and colleges Urban agriculture
History	Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Austronesia Agricultural science Agricultural History Review Arab Agricultural Revolution Argentina Canada China Chile Columbian exchange Green Revolution Indian subcontinent Mesoamerica Middle Ages Neolithic Revolution Organic farming Palestine Peru United Kingdom British Agricultural Revolution Cheshire Scotland United States African-American California
Farming Types	Agrivoltaic Aquaculture Cattle Dairy farming Fur farming Goat farming Grazing Convertible husbandry Rotational grazing Hydroponics Insect farming Livestock Pasture Mixed Monoculture Paddy field Pastoral Bocage Pig farming Poultry farming Ranch Orchards Subsistence agriculture Sheep farming Terrace Wildlife farming
Environmental impact	Agricultural expansion Agricultural pollution Agricultural wastewater Overgrazing Environmental impact of irrigation Overdrafting Climate change and agriculture
Categories	Agricultural machinery Agriculture by country Agriculture companies Biotechnology History of agriculture Livestock Meat industry Poultry farming Agriculture and the environment
Lists	Agriculturist profession Agricultural machinery Food origins Government ministries Universities and colleges
Category Portal Commons Wikiproject