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...)

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Butter sold in a London market, salted (right) and unsalted (left)

Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment, and used as a fat in baking, sauce-making, pan frying, and other cooking procedures.

Most frequently made from cow's milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. It is made by churning milk or cream to separate the fat globules from the buttermilk. Salt has been added to butter since antiquity to help preserve it, particularly when being transported; salt may still play a preservation role but is less important today as the entire supply chain is usually refrigerated. In modern times, salt may be added for taste. Food coloring is sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter, removing the water and milk solids, produces clarified butter, or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat.

Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion resulting from an inversion of the cream, where the milk proteins are the emulsifiers. Butter remains a firm solid when refrigerated but softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature and melts to a thin liquid consistency at 32 to 35 °C (90 to 95 °F). The density of butter is 911 g/L (15+1⁄4 oz/US pt). It generally has a pale yellow color but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Its natural, unmodified color is dependent on the source animal's feed and genetics, but the commercial manufacturing process sometimes alters this with food colorings like annatto or carotene. (Full article...) (Full article...)

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Grain elevator

Credit: Kelly Martin

A Cargill grain elevator and terminal in East St. Louis, Illinois on the east shore of the Mississippi River. Photographed June 15, 2006

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Did you know...

... the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) is the largest and oldest sustainable woodland system in America, is internationally recognized, and meets strict third-party certification standards?

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General images

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

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

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