agriculture

[Middle English, from Latin agrīcultūra : agrī, genitive of ager, field + cultūra, cultivation; see culture.]

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The art and science of crop and livestock production. In its broadest sense, agriculture comprises the entire range of technologies associated with the production of useful products from plants and animals, including soil cultivation, crop and livestock management, and the activities of processing and marketing. The term agribusiness has been coined to include all the technologies that mesh in the total inputs and outputs of the farming sector. In this light, agriculture encompasses the whole range of economic activities involved in manufacturing and distributing the industrial inputs used in farming; the farm production of crops, animals, and animal products; the processing of these materials into finished products; and the provision of products at a time and place demanded by consumers.

Many different factors influence the kind of agriculture practiced in a particular area. Among these are climate, soil, water availability, topography, nearness to markets, transportation facilities, land costs, and general economic level. Climate, soil, water availability, and topography vary widely throughout the world. This variation brings about a wide range in agricultural production enterprises. Certain areas tend toward a specialized agriculture, whereas other areas engage in a more diversified agriculture. As new technology is introduced and adopted, environmental factors are less important in influencing agricultural production patterns. Continued growth in the world's population makes critical the continuing ability of agriculture to provide needed food and fiber.

The primary agricultural products consist of crop plants for human food and animal feed and livestock products. The crop plants can be divided into 10 categories: grain crops (wheat, for flour to make bread, many bakery products, and breakfast cereals; rice, for food; maize, for livestock feed, syrup, meal, and oil; sorghum grain, for livestock feed; and oats, barley, and rye, for food and livestock feed); food grain legumes (beans, peas, lima beans, and cowpeas, for food; and peanuts, for food and oil); oil seed crops (soybeans, for oil and high-protein meal; and linseed, for oil and high-protein meal); root and tuber crops (principally potatoes and sweet potatoes); sugar crops (sugarbeets and sugarcane); fiber crops (principally cotton, for fiber to make textiles and for seed to produce oil and high-protein meal); tree and small fruits; nut crops; vegetables; and forages (for support of livestock pastures and range grazing lands and for hay and silage crops). The forages are dominated by a wide range of grasses and legumes, suited to different conditions of soil and climate.

Livestock products include cattle, for beef, tallow, and hides; dairy cattle, for milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, and other products; sheep, for mutton (lamb) and wool; pigs, for pork and lard; poultry (chiefly chickens but also turkeys and ducks) for meat and eggs; and horses, primarily for recreation. See also Poultry production; Sheep.

Definition: farming
Antonyms: industry

Is not a concept the Supreme Court uses to decide cases. Rather, agriculture is a context from which cases arise. From 1790 to 1860, through disputes involving agricultural lands, the Court rendered decisions establishing the sovereignty (Fremont v. United States, 1854) and private ownership of the American land base (United States v. Noe, 1859). Litigation between inventors of agricultural implements gave rise to early interpretations of the Constitution's patents clause (Seymour v. McCormick, 1854).

After the Civil War, agricultural products were the basis of a flourishing commerce. As this commerce grew, state legislatures passed statutes governing elevators, railroads, and packers. These measures stirred profound debate in the Supreme Court from 1873 to 1940. One set of justices believed that states had constitutional authority through their police power to protect the public's health, safety, and welfare. These justices accepted state statutes licensing livestock butchers (Slaughterhouse Cases, 1873) or grain storage (Payne v. Kansas, 1918). They also approved the regulation of rates charged by elevators (Munn v. Illinois, 1877) and minimum and maximum retail prices for milk (Nebbia v. New York, 1934). Another set of justices believed that these state statutes contravened the Fourteenth Amendment'sdue process, equal protection, and privileges and immunities clauses. These justices invoked the Fourteenth Amendment to protect American citizens from state monopoly franchises (Slaughterhouse Cases, 1884), confiscatory rate regulations (Brass v. North Dakota, 1894), and differential licensing standards among agricultural processors (Frost v. Oklahoma Corporation Commission, 1929). Although the context shifted from agricultural commerce after 1940, the debate about the interplay between state police power and the Fourteenth Amendment persisted (seeCommerce Power).

The Supreme Court often addressed matters of agriculture when determining congressional authority over American commerce. The justices have held that states can protect their internal agriculture from contagious diseases (Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Co. v. Haber, 1898; Mintz v. Baldwin, 1933), but that they cannot isolate themselves from interstate trade and competition (Lemke v. Farmers' Grain Co., 1922; Baldwin v. G.A.F. Seelig, Inc., 1935). Simultaneously, as a government of delegated powers, Congress can only regulate interstate commerce. In the process of defining agricultural interstate commerce, the Court made several of its most momentous rulings.

Initially, the Supreme Court perceived agriculture susceptible to federal power when it was in the stream of commerce between states (Stafford v. Wallace, 1922), but not before it entered that stream (Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. McKendree, 1905). As the Depression deepened in 1933, however, the Court had to reevaluate its position in light of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Both laws expanded federal power over commerce through administrative agencies. In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) and United States v. Butler (1936), the Supreme Court ruled the two laws unconstitutional.

In Schechter, the Supreme Court expressed concern that Congress delegated legislative power to administrative agencies without proper standards for bureaucratic action (see Delegation of Powers). Congress responded by enacting the second Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1938. The Court upheld the new law because Congress had set substantive standards to govern the Department of Agriculture (Mulford v. Smith, 1939). Moreover, in a series of cases beginning in 1936 (St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States) and ending in 1941 (United States v. Morgan), the Court developed doctrines of procedural fairness to govern the Department of Agriculture's administrative actions.

In Butler, the Court ruled that an agricultural tax to bring production in line with demand unconstitutionally invaded state power over intrastate commerce. By early 1942, however, the Court upheld federal regulation of intrastate milk, directly affecting interstate commerce (United States v. Wrightwood Dairy). Later in 1942, the Court, in Wickard v. Filburn, adopted the expansive substantial economic effect test to determine when Congress can control intrastate commerce. Wickard remains the leading constitutional case approving sweeping federal power to govern American agriculture through the Commerce Clause.

For five decades after Wickard, agriculture rarely provided the context for important Supreme Court decisions. Agriculture provided the context for the state action exemption to federal antitrust laws (Parker v. Brown, 1943), for the definition of investment contracts under securities law (Securities and Exchange Commission v. Howey [1946]), and a major case determining the extent of federal common law (United states v. Kimbell Foods, Inc., 1979). With three cases in fifty years, the Supreme Court harvest from agricultural cases appeared complete. Beginning in the 1990s, however, agriculture provided fertile ground for Supreme Court action.

The Supreme Court used agricultural market promotion programs (“check‐off” funds) to address the First Amendment right to be free from compelled speech to which the individual citizen (agricultural producer) objects. (Compare Glickman v. Wileman Bros. & Elliott, Inc., 1997 with United States v. United Foods, Inc., 2001.) The Supreme Court endorsed strong intellectual property rights in patents for corn plants and corn seeds, thereby promoting agricultural biotechnology (J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi‐Bred International, Inc., 2001).

In a twist of fate as the twenty‐first century begins, agriculture may present the Supreme Court with cases in which to address the scope of congressional power under the Commerce Clause—a power that Wickard approved so broadly sixty years ago. As environmental laws begin to apply fully to farming and ranching, agriculture may become the context in which the Supreme Court defines yet again the delegated powers of Congress (commerce, taxation, spending) and how these powers relate to the constitutional structure of federalism. The Supreme Court appears poised to address fundamental constitutional precedent from agricultural cases.

See also Capitalism.

— Drew L. Kershen

The Hebrew patriarchs owned large flocks of sheep and goats, but they were not fully nomadic because they did sow seasonally, sometimes with success (Isaac at Gerar, Gen 26:6, 12). Genuine camel nomadism appears in the 13th-11th centuries B.C., with peoples such as the Midianites. From the clash between an agricultural urban society and immigrant semi-nomadic landless groups (15th-13th centuries B.C.), the Hebrews emerged as the dominant force. With improved security in the later royal period (9th-6th centuries B.C.) livestock were kept outside and the towns became the centers of agricultural industries. Settlement was within the framework of the tribe; later the kinship bore responsibility for keeping the family lots within the group. Villages with large scale terrace systems in the highlands began developing in the 8th century B.C., with smaller farm units as well (e.g. Khirbet er-Ras near Jerusalem), with consequent improved facilities for plowing and cultivation. A 10th century B.C. agricultural calendar found at Gezer regulated a mixed-farming pattern, composed of early and later-sown cereals, flax, olives, vines and undefined summer crops. Plant finds from Lachish in the Early Iron Age comprised olives, grapes, wheat, barley and other cereals and pulses. A large scale oil industry was developed by the Phillistines in the Shephela region, with one centre situated at Ekron.

Hebrew biblical agriculture was self-sufficient mixed farming based mainly on the small family unit. In the course of time it became highly diversified: the farmers of Transjordan brought cereals, lentils, butter, sheep and cattle to David. Later sources (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) describe the large self-supporting household with orchards, vineyards and livestock, producing woollen, linen and leather goods for sale. Mishnaic references indicate manuring by the folding of stock or by farmyard manure. Unsown arable land was plowed three or four times, suggesting biennial fallow, but the Hebrew sabbatical (seventh) year fallow was also important to soil fertility. Some 30 lbs (13.5 kg) of seed were used to the half-acre (0.2 hectares), about half the quantity normally used today, possibly planted by dibbing. Summer crops, such as cumin and flax, were sown before barley and wheat. Irrigation was known, particularly in the Jordan Rift. Weeding was by hoe and harvesting by sickle, the stalk apparently being cut high. Grain was threshed by oxen, threshing sled or stone threshing roller. Legumes and barley were fed to stock, along with chopped straw and hay. While the vegetables recorded in the Bible are few – leeks, onions, garlic – a number of herbs and several plants (hyssop, myrtle, camphor, crocus, rose, etc.) were used for perfumes and incense as far back as the period of the United Monarchy. Among orchard and plantation produce were nuts, pomegranates, figs, dates, grapes, olives, the fruits of the sycamore and carob trees, the ethrog (a citrus fruit) and apples.

The foundation of the United Monarchy led to the growth of larger estates held by the king and his nobles; the prophets provide evidence of land accumulation at the expense of the small peasant and the emergence of a royal tenantry. State control of production and systematic royal taxation began under David, who appointed stewards in charge of cattle rearing, vineyards, olive and sycamore groves and granaries. Stamped jar-handles and the ostraca found at Samaria attest the systematic taxation of oil and wine. Solomon's chariotry also implies a well-organized supply of grain and fodder; indeed Solomon also exported large quantities of wheat to Tyre annually, while the establishment of the Temple cult testifies to a well-developed animal husbandry, especially cattle. It seems that geese were fattened for the royal court, but other poultry do not appear before the 6th century B.C.

After the return from the Babylonian Exile, enslavement of small peasants for debt and land-grabbing by the aristocracy increased the number of large estates, though the process was checked by the efforts of Nehemiah. Judea remained a country of preponderantly peasant holdings until it fell within the Hellenistic orbit in 333 B.C. In western Samaria field-towers of the Hellenistic and earlier Roman periods, each representing a family holding, have been found to be connected with wine production, but were also associated with oil presses and threshing floors, the units varying from 1 to 6 acres (0.4 to 2.4 hectares). In southwest Samaria, four-roomed farmhouses from the Early Iron Age, each inhabited by 40 to 50 people, continued to be occupied into the Hellenistic age.

Hellenization accelerated technical progress and initiated gruelling taxation, only temporarily alleviated by the Hasmoneans. Ptolemaic control led to the expansion of state-owned lands worked by tied peasants. In the 3rd century B.C. the country was exporting summer wheat, olive oil, wine, meat and cheese. Some new introductions such as fenugreek (Trigonella graecum) probably preceded the arrival of the Greeks, who acclimatized Egyptian beans, lentils and gourds. Apricots, peaches, cherries, oranges and lemons reached the area from Asia via Italy. Cotton and rice also entered the country in this period. Mishnaic and Talmudic sources list numerous plants first imported in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, including lupins, asparagus, marrows and turnips. The agriculture of the times was mixed and intensive, chiefly for home consumption and based primarily on grain, olives and vines. But it also included industrial crops (cotton, flax, hemp and perfume plants), fruit and market gardening. Oil production reached industrial proportions, perhaps associated with a cooperative system of distribution. Manuring was careful and intensive; this denotes a close relationship between cattle rearing and arable farming. Fallow was biennial, but summer crops must sometimes have resulted in a triennial rotation. The plow was a heavy beam plow to which mold-boards could be fitted. Iron plow-points were found from the early 1st millennium B.C. Irrigation machinery was also much elaborated, resulting in greatly increased grain yields. Farm units tended to shrink owing to population growth and Gentile pressure. Judea's prime exports were wine, dates and incense.

The Hellenistic and Roman periods saw the growth of the isolated farm as opposed to farming focused on village centers. Fields were customarily open in the lowlands and enclosed in the hills. Small co-axial field systems with demarcated stone boundary walls have been investigated in different parts of the highland regions of Israel. Agricultural cultivation with winter flooding of wadis existed in the Negev highlands from Chalcolithic times. Terraces in the Negev Desert is a relatively later phenomenon. The Nabateans concentrated primarily on mercantile activities and patch cultivation existed near their settlements, such as at Avdat, but they did not cultivate terraces. This occurred for the first time on a large scale during the Byzantine and Umayyad periods.

Excavations have shown a frequent occurrence of sheep and goat bones at sites, with the appearance of smaller quantities of cattle and wild animals as well. Dog bones appear from time to time, paricularly at village sites. A dog burial ground from the Persian period was uncovered at Ashkelon. Bones of the domestic pig is notably absent at Jewish sites, as studies of 1st century A.D. Jerusalem and later Sepphoris have shown.

The decreased role of agriculture in American life at the beginning of the twenty-first century masks the extent to which farming has often shaped the national experience. Agriculture, at the very least, features an impressively lengthy heritage. The first American farmers were Native Americans who cultivated indigenous and Mesoamerican plants in excess of seven thousand years ago. Amer Indian agriculture evolved according to environmental, technological, and cultural imperatives. In the South, river valleys and floodplains attracted early farming endeavors. Squash was planted in the Lower Tennessee River valley over four thousand years ago. In sub-sequent years, southern tribes developed sophisticated intercropping skills based around complementing one crop with another. Beans and corn proved an ideal mix, beans providing valuable soil nutrients (such as nitrogen) required by corn, while cornstalks served as convenient climbing vehicles for beans.

Agricultural pursuits varied by region. In the Upper Great Lakes, Ojibwa and Assiniboine nations sowed wild rice in fertile marshlands. The slight interest in horticulture on the Great Plains reflected the dominance of hunting pursuits. From the eighth century onwards, corn represented the most widespread agricultural product in the aboriginal economy. In the Southwest, Anasazi farmers developed their own hybrid corn from chapalote and maize de ocho. Native Americans also pioneered irrigated agriculture. In the Salt and Gila Valleys, the Hohokam dug (and successfully maintained) irrigation canals up to seventy-five feet across. Two canals measuring over ten miles in length watered fields near today's Phoenix.

Colonial Agriculture

The first European farmers drew on indigenous wisdom in order to survive. Prepared for gold-searching rather than subsistence farming, early residents of Jamestown, Virginia, relied on local Indian knowledge of planting to circumvent starvation. Settlers learned how to cultivate corn and tobacco. The pilgrims of the fledgling Plymouth Colony similarly discovered the wonders of maize. As the Massachusetts Bay Colony expanded, pioneers introduced cows, horses, and sheep to the eastern landscape. With few sheds and little fencing, livestock initially ran wild. Most early colonists were city gentry, religious dissenters, or indentured servants—all with little experience of farming. Tools proved basic, with the hoe, axe, and scythe the most common implements. Those who were fortunate enough to own plows made money by working the fields of their neighbors. Fresh immigrants sought out Indian clearings for crop cultivation rather than expend significant time on tree felling and heavy brush clearance. While a few regions, such as the Connecticut River valley and the Hudson River area, proved ideal for agriculture, thin and rocky soil compromised crop productivity on the eastern seaboard. Most farmers migrated to fresh terrain when soils became depleted rather than develop sustainable agricultural systems. The sheer abundance of land lent itself to this practice, with more territory always available for cultivation. The taking of Indian land occasionally provoked violent confrontation. In 1676, tormented by Indian attacks and crop failures, Nathaniel Bacon led a vigilante group of servants and small farmers to exact revenge on local Native American communities. Governor William Berkeley, who challenged the rebellion, was placed under house arrest.

Easily grown and requiring no machinery to process, corn served as the staple food crop in the fledgling colonial economy. Meanwhile, tobacco emerged as a key trade commodity. The first English tobacco was grown in Virginia in 1613. A smoking craze in western Europe encouraged colonists to continually increase their production of tobacco for export. Virginia farmers so focused on the weed that colonial governors issued regulations warning residents to plant some food crops for subsistence. In 1628, production surpassed 550,000 pounds. In the absence of harvesting machinery, tobacco, along with other crops, depended on ample manual labor. At first, indentured servants filled the niche in the fast-expanding tobacco fields of Virginia and Maryland, as well as in the rice fields of South Carolina. However, servitude gave way to slavery. By 1700, southern agriculture was already dependent on a slave economy.

During the 1700s, established New England agriculturalists experimented with more specialized forms of production. Animal husbandry developed in response to needs for draft horses to pull wagons and quality meat for town dwellers. German American farmers bred the much-lauded Conestoga breed of draft horse. By furnishing all manner of grains for consumption in the fast-expanding cities of the Atlantic seaboard, as well as for export abroad, New Jersey and Pennsylvania farmers earned their colonies the reputation of breadbasket kingdoms. Meanwhile, in the South, plantation owners reaped successive financial harvests from a single-crop economy based on exploitative labor. In 1708, tobacco exports reached 30 million pounds. On the eve of the American Revolution, the figure surpassed 100 million.

Farming in the New Republic

During the American Revolution, agriculture proved essential in keeping both armies fighting. Farmers responded to war by increasing their production of cattle, fruit, and crops. A female labor force filled roles previously occupied by men. Shortages usually came about as a result of troop movements and transportation problems rather than agricultural shortfalls. Both sides drew on the lofty image of owning one's own farm to recruit men for war duties, offering acres of land to those who volunteered.

The victorious United States was, first and foremost, an agricultural nation. Having procured a farm in New York, French commentator J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, writing immediately after the Revolution, explained how "this formerly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasant farm, and in return, it has established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our importance as inhabitants of such a district" (Letters from an American Farmer [1782]). In Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Thomas Jefferson expounded his idea of a virtuous agrarian nation by claiming that "those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God." Agriculture united men of differing classes and persuasions, appealing to both the rugged frontiersman and the dignified gentleman—the latter finding outlet in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785) and the South Carolina Society for Promoting and Improving Agriculture and Other Rural Concerns (1785). Farming was a way of life. The 1810 census recorded a total population of 7.2 million Americans, 90 percent of whom lived on farms.

Successive land acts—most notably the Land Survey Ordinance of 1785 and the Land Act of 1796—set in motion the transfer of the public domain to private hands. Land was survey ed, parceled into townships, and auctioned. However, a minimum purchase of 640 acres, at first priced at one dollar, then increased to two, proved beyond the reach of the average farmer. Land speculators benefited most from the distribution system, while squatting on unclaimed tracts became popular with poorer farmers. Geometric parcels, the infamous grid system, hardly abided by landscape topography or suited river access. When sales proved disappointing, the government instituted credit reforms and reduced the minimum acreage to 160 acres.

Farming expanded west of the Appalachians during the late 1700s. The Ohio River valley, with its rich soil and timber resources, invited settlement. However, frontier farming proved far from easy. Migrant families arrived at their wilderness purchase with few animals, tools, or financial resources. Densely forested land required extensive clearing. Agricultural technology remained primitive, with the time-honored plough, the sickle, the hoe, and the axe physically testing the endurance and the resolve of the agrarian pioneer. The transporting of goods was limited by dirt roads and changeable weather conditions. When it rained, roadways disappeared beneath mud and surface water. Farmers set their sights on quick improvements to properties before selling out to purchase a larger acreage. Successful frontier farming depended on good soil and a dedicated family. From an early age, children contributed to the home economy from milking to harvesting. Country stores proved important suppliers of all manner of items from tea and coffee to gunpowder and pottery.

Having exhausted soils in Georgia and the Carolinas, southern plantation owners joined small-scale farmers in moving into Alabama, Mississippi, and western Georgia in the early 1800s. The wealthiest plantation holders purchased vast swathes of land; poorer farmers were often left with marginal plots. Cotton became a staple crop of the South with the invention of the mechanized cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. The machine separated valuable cotton fiber from unwanted seed. In 1811, output of cotton in the South exceeded 80 million pounds.

The antebellum period was marked by new technologies, increasing commercialization and specialization, geographical expansion, and transportation innovation. Much-improved transport routes aided New England farmers. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 allowed grain to be moved at far cheaper cost. While initially charging twenty-two dollars per ton for travel, by 1835 the cost of canal transport had dropped to just four dollars. The Cumberland or National Road, starting at Cumberland, Maryland, reached Vandalia, Illinois, in 1841. Westerly migration continued unabated, with the farming frontier extending to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa in the north and Texas in the south. Pioneers took to raising cattle for beef in Ohio and parts of Kentucky. As industrializing cities attracted many rural migrants, northern farmers welcomed developments in labor-saving agricultural machinery. John Deere engineered the steel moldboard plow in 1837 (dubbed the "singing plow" for the whining noise it produced when cutting), a tool much valued on the midwestern prairie with its rough sod. Agricultural societies and fairs proliferated. Nonetheless, farming endeavors in the United States were divided according to two types of agricultural system: small-scale farming in the North and the plantation in the South.

Postbellum Agriculture in the South and the North

The testing climate of the Civil War highlighted inadequacies in southern agriculture. Not only was farmland wrecked by conflict and slash-and-burn techniques, but structural deficiencies came to the fore. Transport systems were shown to be deficient and southern agriculture lacked a diversity of products. White planters suddenly found themselves without a labor force. The reconstruction of southern agriculture proved difficult. Freed slaves relished the idea of having their own farm, a project taken up by the government under the auspices of the Southern Homestead Act (1866). However, available public land was generally of poor quality, while freedmen lacked the money necessary for forest clearance, housing, and planting. Only four thousand claimants applied for plots under the act and the measure was repealed ten years later. Systems of tenancy gradually emerged in the postbellum South. Sharecropping involved the lease of typically twenty to forty acres (along with tools and housing) by a landowner to a working family. In return, the family forfeited a proportion (usually half) of its crop. Merchants and landowners loaned cash or supplies to sharecroppers who had little money to pay for basic living expenses. In practice, revenue from the harvest frequently failed to cover repayments, and many sharecroppers found themselves with spiraling debts. White landowners grew to exercise levels of control similar to the pre–Civil War era. Cotton production dominated the southern landscape, aided by high prices (rising to forty-three cents a pound) in the late 1860s. Even when prices dropped to ten cents a pound in the mid-1870s, output continued to rise. By 1890, production had reached 8 million bales a year.

In the North, increased markets and the absence of significant wartime disruption allowed farmers to repay debts and improve their landholdings. Land prices soared, rising in Iowa from twelve dollars an acre in 1860 to twenty-five dollars ten years later. Agriculture became more mechanized, with new plows and reapers taking advantage of farm horses. Regional specialization proceeded apace as farmers were forced to become more competitive and efficient. Facing foreign and domestic competition, many sheep raisers abandoned marginal lands to take up jobs in the swelling cities. Dairying and fruit growing became increasingly popular in New England, aided by high prices, urban demand, and innovations in refrigeration technology.

The government maintained a keen interest in the agricultural sector during this period. After lobbying from the U.S. Agricultural Society (1852), Congress established the Department of Agriculture in 1862 (raised to cabinet level in 1889). Isaac Newton, who had previously served the agricultural division of the Patent Office, assumed the mantle of first commissioner. During the same year, the Land-Grant College Act (or Morrill Act) allotted public land to individual states for the purpose of establishing agricultural colleges. Federal and state agencies became involved in information gathering, regulation, and scientific research. In 1884, the Bureau of Animal Industry was established to curb imports of diseased animals and to work towards the eradication of Texas fever, a cattle affliction spread by ticks. The Hatch Act of 1887 offered federal support to agricultural experiment stations linked to land grant colleges. (The first station had been established in 1875 at Wesley an University in Middletown, Connecticut.) Scientists studied insect disease, dairy production techniques, and plant breeding and hybridization. The late 1800s also saw the strengthening of farmers associations, who sought to influence state and federal policy in matters of animal health as well as price subsidies and credit payments. Formed in 1867, the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry explored cooperative ventures, demanded lower railroad tariffs and banking rates, and lobbied for gender equality. The Farmers' Alliance exerted an influence over federal agricultural policies in the 1880s, but it was largely subsumed under the People's Party's 1892 platform of economic intervention, nationalization of railroads, and agricultural assistance. After a lackluster performance in the 1896 election, the populist movement dissipated, though farmers' associations continued to draw support. In 1902, Texan Isaac Newton Gresham established the Farmer's Educational and Cooperative Union. Later known as the National Farmers' Union, the organization gained popularity on the Great Plains and in the Midwest.

The Conquest of the West

The first government agents and army scouts to cross the Mississippi spoke of a barren area entirely unfit for agriculture. In 1810, Zebulon Pike defined the Great Plains—the undulating sea of grass that stretched from longitude 100© west to the Rocky Mountains—by its aridity. The report accompanying Major Stephen Long's 1820 expedition described the region as "a dreary plain, wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence." Long's famous phrase, the "Great American Desert," passed into the popular vernacular and was featured on maps of the United States for many years after. Accustomed to temperate eastern climes, travelers to the High Plains appeared shocked by its lack of trees, sparse vegetation, and seasonal extremes. Traditional agriculture did not seem possible in this semi-arid environment.

However, another image took hold in the American mind, one that rendered agriculture instrumental to the settlement of the West in the 1800s. Inspired by Jefferson's agrarian vision for the United States, and informed by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, citizens began to regard the West as a garden, a pastoral paradise for the taking. One of the first to publicize this idea was explorer John Frémont, who insisted that agriculture could flourish on the plains. Similar advertisements abounded in railroad publications from the 1860s. Many believed that bringing the plains under cultivation would encourage moisture; in the famous expression of the time, "rain would follow the plow."

Interest in the West following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 focused on its valuable fur trade, other trading opportunities, and minerals. In the 1830s, emigrants established farms in Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley. The Mormons pioneered irrigated agriculture by diverting streams and building canals in Salt Lake City from the late 1840s. In California, a produce economy grew up around San Francisco and the Central Valley servicing Gold Rush mining towns with wheat, wine, and fruit. However, these represented localized pockets of agricultural activity. Of a total 1.5 million American farmers in 1850, only 119,000 tended lands west of the Mississippi.

It was the passing of attractive land laws that enticed Americans and Europeans to the West in number. Land and prosperity were connected under the Homestead Act of 1862, legislation allotting 160 acres of "free land" to citizens over the age of twenty-one who had never fought against the United States. (The latter provision was dropped in 1866 to allow ex-Confederates to file claims.) Title was granted after five years of cultivation or payment could be commuted after six months at $1.25 an acre. Fifty-seven percent of farms on the frontier were established under the Homestead Act. Settlers also purchased plots at auction or from land speculators.

Beginning in the late 1860s, families stacked their belongings into wagons and headed west in droves. Kansas, the Dakotas, and Nebraska attracted more than 430,000 land claims before 1895. Between 1896 and 1920, the homestead boom spanned Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The first homesteads were built in streambeds and along rivers. After these prized lots were taken, settlers staked claims on the prairie. Faced with a dearth of wood and water, farmers built houses from sod and dug wells. Many settlers planted corn or wheat as cash crops and kept a small vegetable plot or garden. However, customary agricultural practices proved ill suited to western terrain. Less corn grew on 160 acres in west Kansas than on 40 acres in Illinois. Contending with a lack of tools, limited labor, and occasional plagues of grasshoppers, many first-generation farmers elected to go back east or push on to the Pacific. The agrarian dream nonetheless had a powerful allure, and there were always sod busters willing to try their luck on the prairie.

Great Plains farmers learned to adapt. Many remedied the lack of timber for fencing by planting Osage orange hedges. Mennonites from Germany introduced Turkey Red Wheat, a hardy variety that withstood harsh prairie winters. In the 1870s, Colorado landowners led by George Washington Swink tapped water from the Arkansas River to grow cantaloupes and sugar beets. Technological advances aided the western farmer. Wind pumps, barbed wire, grain drills, sulky plows, and mechanical reapers improved productivity and labor efficiency. The railroad brought a revolution in transportation, allowing farmers to gain supplies and ship their products to market swiftly and easily. Some even believed that the steel wires of the railroad encouraged rain. Heavy rains indeed fell west of longitude 97© west between 1878 and 1887, bringing with them a flood of hopeful farmers.

Although cattle had been raised at Spanish missions since the 1700s and pioneers such as William Sublette had brought steers to Wyoming in the 1830s, the cattle kingdom rose to dominance in the western economy only after the Civil War. The industry began in Texas, where enterprising outfits such as the XIT Ranch capitalized on the availability of grassland and the abundance of longhorn cattle (some 5 million by 1866) to build a successful ranching economy. Cattle freely roamed the range until the spring and fall roundups, when cowpunchers drove herds to railheads, bound for the Chicago stockyards. Some 10 million animals were driven out of Texas between 1865 and 1890. By The 1870s, the cattle industry had spread across the Central and Northern Plains. As demand for higher quality meat increased, shorthorns and herefords replaced the scrawny but resilient longhorns. The open range gave way to closed pasture in the 1880s following the invention of barbed wire and escalating land feuds between homesteaders and cattlemen.

The late 1800s brought a time of depression for the agricultural economy of the West. Homesteaders faced problems of overproduction and falling market prices. Between 1866 and 1894 wheat prices fell from $2.06 a bushel to just 49 cents. The summers of 1886 and 1894 were among the driest on record. Many farmers faced starvation and destitution. Between 1890 and 1900, the number of farms in western Kansas declined from 14,300 to 8,900. Life was equally desperate for ranchers. Over-stocking of the open range caused prices to plummet, and when the blizzards of 1887 hit, up to 85 percent of the cattle perished. Writing in 1901, William D. Johnson of the U.S. Geological Survey called the settlement of the Great Plains an "experiment in agriculture on a vast scale. It nevertheless ended in total failure."

Much of the trans-Mississippi region had been brought into cultivation by 1900. Wheat proliferated east of the Rockies, cattle and sheep grazed the intermountain West, and speciality crops grew on Pacific slopes. With the majority of western lands receiving less than twenty inches of rainfall a year, successful agriculture remained dependent on irrigation. The federal government played a crucial role in making the environment more suitable for farming. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 allotted free title to 160 acres if one quarter of that area was planted with trees, while the Desert Land Act of 1877 gave 640 acres to settlers who agreed to water their land, although such measures were sometimes rendered ineffective by fraud. Recognizing a need for the federal government to help organize water projects, Congress passed the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, a landmark scheme that assigned the Reclamation Service (later the Bureau of Reclamation) the task of overseeing reclamation projects. Seen as second only in significance to the Homestead Act, the Newlands Act irrigated the West through a series of dams along watercourses including the Salt River in Arizona and the Truckee and Carson Rivers in Nevada. By 1924, federal projects had watered 1.2 million acres in the region.

From Golden Age to Disaster

Government irrigation programs, technological innovation, a strong export economy, and a growing urban population delivered a golden age to American farmers in the early years of the twentieth century. Public confidence ran high, as did prices for agricultural products. World War I provided a further boost to grain, stock, and cotton markets. Land became a valuable commodity, the price of farm lots doubling in Iowa between 1914 and 1920. Meanwhile, Congress sought to address the limitations of the original Homestead Act, increasing allotments for western crop and animal producers to 640 acres under the Kinkaid Act of 1904, the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, and the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916.

The early 1900s witnessed a commercial revolution in American agriculture. Technological improvements increased efficiency and productivity. Some 17,000 tractors were produced annually by 1917. That year, Henry Ford unveiled the Fordson, a maneuverable tractor affordable to the small farmer at $750. Farmers became increasingly adept at managing crops and animals to maximize output. Scientists genetically altered corn to breed a more productive hybrid seed. Advances in veterinary science resulted in the near elimination of tick fever in cattle by 1914. The American landscape increasingly bore the hallmarks of commercial agriculture. Farmers in Connecticut and New York concentrated on fruit production; Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan were renowned for dairy; the midwestern farmer favored corn and soybeans; wheat and alfalfa grew on the Great Plains; and cotton and tobacco remained staples in the South. The tendency towards rationalization reached its apogee in California, where Central Valley farmers developed a lucrative fruit-and-vegetable enterprise based on commodity exchanges and supply controls. Large-scale industrialized producers came to dominate the market in the Far West based on capital investment, vertical integration, and cheap migrant workers lacking union representation.

The period of agricultural prosperity that marked the early 1900s came to an end in the 1920s. Crop prices decreased as war demand and relief programs faltered. Many small farmers had overextended themselves to meet wartime exigencies. Mechanization, increased acreage under cultivation, a declining birthrate, and protectionism created a surfeit of agricultural products. Prices plummeted, with gross income from agriculture declining from nearly$17 billion in 1919 to less than $12 billion ten years later. The situation became more acute after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which caused a massive fall in the domestic produce market as a consequence of mass unemployment. In 1932, grain prices ran at twelve cents per bushel; hogs rated at three cents a pound. In 1933, the index of farm prices stood at 70, from a figure of 148 four years earlier.

Farmers in the Midwest faced environmental as well as economic catastrophe. A dry spell beginning in 1931 brought parched crops, cracked earth, and dust storms. Many farmers abandoned their plots, leaving more loose topsoil to be whipped up by strong winds. Historians continue to debate the cause of the Dust Bowl, positing drought, inappropriate agricultural practices, and an exaggerated belief in human ingenuity as contributory factors.

On 14 April 1935, a day known as Black Sunday, dust storms darkened the sky from the eastern seaboard to the Rockies, an area of some 100 million acres. In the worst-affected regions—Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico—the "Dirty Thirties" caused crop failures, livestock die-offs, and a bout of respiratory ailments. One eyewitness recalled how "all we could do about it was just sit in our dusty chairs, gaze at each other through the fog that filled the room and watch that fog settle slowly and silently, covering everything—including ourselves—in a thick, brownish gray blanket." Around 500,000 people chose to leave the Midwest during the 1930s, a migration epitomized by the flight of the Okies to California.

The New Deal

Having pledged a "New Deal for the American People" at the Democratic National Convention in July 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March 1933, determined to tackle the social and economic malaise wrought by the Great Depression. Judging it imperative to keep the country farming, New Deal reforms were quick to focus on agriculture. Agrarian communities received crop subsidies, credit relief, and soil conservation programs to the tune of $1 billion. Such measures continued a historic involvement of the federal government in promoting agriculture. However, FDR's activist program inaugurated a new level of intervention. Where the Hoover administration had previously advocated voluntary crop supply restrictions and limited help for cooperatives, Roosevelt committed the government to agricultural planning, production, distribution, and financial subsidy on an unprecedented scale.

The centerpiece of legislation for the American farmer was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of May 1933. The AAA sought to stabilize crop prices and farmers' incomes by controlling the production of seven basic commodities. The federal government was authorized to negotiate with producers to reduce acres under cultivation, while a tax on processors further discouraged production. Farmers received compensatory checks for leaving land fallow, a handout that the government hoped would prevent loan foreclosures. Between 1934 and 1935, the AAA successfully reduced the amount of land given over to tobacco and cotton, but it failed to have a discernible impact on staples such as wheat, hogs, corn, and dairy. Critics pointed out that the AAA favored large and efficient producers (with more land to put aside) over tenants and sharecroppers. In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the tax on processors unconstitutional, resulting two years later in a revised act that compensated producers who instituted soil conservation measures.

The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) of October 1933 allowed the government to purchase crops and distribute them in such a way as to prevent price rises. Commodities that could be stored were withheld from sale, while perishable goods were given to charitable organizations and schools or were exported. The CCC paid more than the market value, providing an important safety valve for farmers in need of support. Other measures designed to shore up the agricultural sector by providing financial aid included the Farm Credit Act of 1933, the Resettlement Administration of 1935, and the Farm Security Administration (1937).

New Dealers prized rural electrification as a way of modernizing American agriculture. As of 1930, only 571,000 of the 6.3 million farms in the country featured electrical lighting. Regional disparities existed. California, Utah, and Washington were well catered for, not least because of the preponderance of irrigation programs requiring considerable power to run. In Arkansas and Louisiana, by contrast, only one in one hundred farms had electricity. A public scheme providing loans for power lines and generating stations was established under the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. Created by executive order the same year, the Electric Home and Farm Authority (EHFA) forwarded low-cost loans to farmers for electrical equipment. Inspired by the success of the TVA in bringing power to agrarian communities in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee, Roosevelt inaugurated a country wide Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in May 1935. Improvements in production techniques, mechanization, rural education, and domestic life marked the REA as an outstanding success.

The REA's motto, "if you put a light on every farm, you put a light in every heart," nonetheless failed to stem the flow of families leaving the land for the city. In New England, the number of farms dropped from 103,255 in 1930 to 21,670 in 1950. The three million African American tenants and sharecroppers who worked in the South faced poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination. The New Deal brought benefits in the form of loans, price support, and soil restoration, yet it proved of limited effectiveness in improving the overall lot of the farmer. It was only with World War II and increased demand for foodstuffs, increases in industrial employment, and buoyant prices that the agricultural sector fully recovered. That said, FDR's New Deal remained immensely important for American agriculture, as programs enacted in the 1930s set a pattern of government regulation that persisted for the rest of the twentieth century.

Agriculture Since 1945

The post-1945 period saw American agriculture become more industrialized and capital intensive. Acreage under cultivation increased with advances in technology, irrigation, and genetic engineering. The number of individual farm units declined markedly. At the time of the Civil War, 60 percent of the American population was involved in agriculture. By 1972, this figure stood at 4.6 percent. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, less than 2 percent of Americans were engaged in farming.

The commercialization of agriculture ensured that the small family farm lost out to large, efficient, and mechanized producers able to benefit from economies of scale. In 1955 John H. Davis, former assistant secretary of agriculture, coined the phrase "agribusiness" to describe the new breed of corporations that controlled the entire agricultural process from production to marketing, making deals with individual producers to deliver crops at fixed prices. The modernization of American agriculture brought significant regional changes. As consolidated agribusiness took hold of the modern plantation in the South, cattle, hogs, peanuts, and soybeans became as important as cotton. Meanwhile, the tenure system that had dominated southern agriculture since the late 1800s was replaced by owner or part-owned farms. By 1974, only 12 percent of farms in South Carolina were operated by tenants.

A single American farmer produced enough food to sustain ninety-seven other people by the 1990s (compared to five in 1800), a level of extremely high productivity facilitated by technology. Irrigated farming dominated the Great Plains after technicians in the 1950s developed machinery capable of siphoning water from the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground supply buried from fifty to three hundred feet below the prairie. From the 1940s onwards, chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides (many of which, including DDT, were developed for use in World War II and converted for peacetime use) further raised output. Crop duster planes scattered chemical supplements over the land in order to combat pests and aid seed growth. The use of such additives greatly increased production, although critics, notably the biologist Rachel Carson in her 1962 best-seller, Silent Spring, warned of dangerous ecological side effects. Citizen lobbying and scientific research led to a domestic ban on DDT in 1969. Since the late twentieth century, the agricultural sector has looked to biotechnology and genetic modification as ways to maximize crop resilience, productivity, and consumer appeal.

American agriculture continued to rely on government assistance. Federal programs centered on keeping farmers on the land by taking acreage out of cultivation and offering price supports, as with the Soil Bank Program of 1956 and the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965. Federal policy also encouraged production under subsidy for export to the developing world. With urban dwellers demanding high-quality, low-cost food, the rural sector faced considerable pressures in the post-1945 period. Boycotts and tractor convoys were among the tools employed by the National Farmers Organization, organized in 1955, and the National Farm Workers Association, founded in 1962, to lobby for improvements in rural standards of living. In the twenty-first century, prosperity for the farmer remains dependent on land, weather, market prices, capital investment, and government aid. As of 2000, federal spending on the agricultural sector ran at $71.1 billion, perhaps a testament to the special place of the farmer in American life.

Bibliography

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986.

Cochrane, Willard W. The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. 2d ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Cowdrey, Albert E. This Land, This South: An Environmental History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.

Fite, Gilbert C. Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.

Hart, John Fraser. The Land That Feeds Us. New York: Norton, 1991.

Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994. A good introductory work that offers suggested readings at the end of each chapter.

Knobloch, Frieda. The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

MacDonnell, Lawrence J. From Reclamation to Sustainability: Water, Agriculture, and the Environment in the American West. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1999. A study of irrigation in western agriculture through four case studies.

Meinig, Donald, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. 3 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986–1998. Includes Atlantic, continental, and transcontinental America.

Opie, John. The Law of the Land: Two Hundred Years of American Farmland Policy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. A critical review highlighting the problematic assumptions behind American agriculture.

Saloutos, Theodore. The American Farmer and the New Deal. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982.

Starrs, Paul. Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Worster, Donald. The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. A seminal account of the "Dirty Thirties" by one of the West's foremost environmental historians.

—John Wills

Agriculture is that sector of an economy concerned with the production of food and food products both for domestic use, in (industrial) production and (household) consumption, and for export to external markets. Although it is often difficult to define the sectoral boundaries of agriculture with precision, agriculture is critical to the process of economic growth and economic development. Less developed economies are typically primarily agricultural in terms of output and resource usage and, appropriately, focus on institutions and policies that encourage the modernization of agriculture as a sector to support the growth of industry and services.

As economic growth and development occur, the relative importance of the major producing sectors changes, usually with a declining relative importance for agriculture and a growing relative importance of industry and services. This means that, in the early stages of economic development, agriculture is an important sector in which productivity growth sustains the growth of output. This process involves the substitution of capital for labor and changes the role of agriculture itself as economic growth and development proceed.

In the Russian case, the agricultural sector has always been surrounded by controversy. The reasons for this controversy are best understood within the context of the individual periods of Russian and Soviet economic growth and development, although there are common threads throughout. Not only are policies and institutions important, but ideology has played a major if not always constructive role in this essential sector.

Prior to the legal end of serfdom in 1861, the Russian rural economy was organized on a communal basis (the mir). The premodern agriculture under this feudal-manorial system was characterized by limited mechanization, archaic modes of land usage, and the limited development of human capital.

With the formal end of serfdom in Russia and the emergence of significant economic growth after 1880, attention focused on the extent to which a modern agriculture (emerging market institutions, market policies, investment in both human and physical capital, and so forth) was emerging in Russia and could therefore serve as the under-pinning of industrialization. From an ideological perspective, this would mean the development of capitalism. Two major schools of thought, the agrarian crisis view and the revisionist view, address this issue in different ways. The agrarian crisis view argues that backwardness was sustained prior to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, while the revisionist view sees significantly greater change in the agricultural and other sectors. These interpretations have both been important for our understanding of the level of economic development in 1917, the ideological options available to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and the subsequent discussions regarding agriculture during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period.

The second important era in which agriculture became controversial in Russia is the NEP of the 1920s and its termination through mass collectivization. While the role of agriculture in Russian economic development was an issue of major importance in the 1920s, the implementation of collectivization by Josef Stalin in the late 1920s radically changed the institutional arrangements: It attempted to create a mechanism to support rapid industrialization, while at the same time imposing the ideology of collectivism. It has been argued that, from a strategic point of view, the policies and institutions established did not in fact finance Soviet industrialization. Worse, it has also been argued that the legacy of these institutions and related policies, and especially their manner of implementation, led to serious negative long-term consequences for the necessary but unachieved long-term growth of agricultural productivity. In these respects, collectivization has been viewed, in broad perspective, as a mistake.

The third important era for Russian agriculture is the post-collectivization experience through the end of the 1980s. In spite of continuing attention to and controversy surrounding agriculture in this era, it is agreed that agricultural productivity declined from the 1950s through the 1980s to such a degree that significant grain imports became necessary beginning in the 1960s. Thus agriculture became increasingly expensive (an effect of poor productivity performance) and was artificially sustained by large state subsidies. From a structural point of view, agriculture in this era failed in the sense that agricultural productivity change could not support necessary structural change, a legacy that would await the reformers of the transition era.

Finally, when the Soviet system collapsed and Russia faced economic transition to capitalism, agriculture as a sector was largely neglected. Whereas it was commonly predicted that agriculture would be a leading sector in transition economies, this was not the case in Russia. From a twenty-first-century perspective, it is evident that during transition agriculture has been a low-priority sector, one in which institutional change has been at best modest. Although markets have emerged and trade patterns have changed, the most fundamental element of market agriculture, namely the pursuit of private property rights along with appropriate institutional support, remains controversial and elusive.

Bibliography

Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 7th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Volin, Lazar. (1970). A Century of Russian Agriculture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

—ROBERT C. STUART

The cultivation and harvesting of food in the Middle East, and how it has responded to the pressures of local and global demand and available environmental resources.

Soil cultivation for the production of crops began in the ancient Near East around 10,000 B.C.E. (the Neolithic Revolution), and agriculture is the base of the past and current civilizations of the region. In 1996, 50 percent of the Middle East's population still lived in rural areas. Through the centuries, various rural cultures have developed, and they have balanced environmental and social factors. For example, they have introduced various collective water-management systems. Nevertheless, in terms of food, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has become the least self-sufficient of the world's major populated regions.

Increasing Demand

In 2000, values for the agricultural exports for the entire MENA region were about US$11 billion, whereas the value of agricultural imports totalled
about US$33 billion. Although the differences among Middle Eastern countries are great (for example, Turkey is an occasional exporter of wheat, but Sudan repeatedly experienced famine during the 1980s and early 1990s), some regional generalizations can be made. Rapidly increasing demand for food has outpaced the domestic supply, because of population increase and considerable expansion of per capita incomes during the period of the petroleum boom (roughly 1973 - 1985). Supply response has been significant, although it has been constrained by nature, history, and public policy, but the agricultural systems of the region have undergone considerable transformation as a result of recent efforts to increase domestic food supplies.

During the period from 1980 to 1990, population in the MENA grew at 3.1 percent each year (only sub-Saharan African populations are growing more swiftly) but then slowed in the period from 1990 to 1999 to 2.2 percent, reaching a population of 301 million in 2001. From 1965 to 1988, per capita income was also growing at about 3 percent each year, but in the decade from 1991 to 2001 economic growth was slower in MENA than in any region except sub-Saharan Africa and the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. From 2000 to 2001, the growth of output per capita was less than 1 percent.

Middle Easterners spend a substantial fraction of their additional income on food, especially on luxury foods such as meat and fresh produce. Accordingly, the demand for all food rose at about 4 to 5 percent each year, and the demand for meat, milk, vegetables, and fruits rose at roughly 6 percent each year in the same period.

Few of the world's agricultural sectors could have met this increased demand from domestic supply alone. The countries of the MENA could not, and they became increasingly dependent on food imports. Most countries in the region now import at least 290 pounds (130 kg) of grain per person per year, and many import far more. In 2001, Libya imported 885 pounds (402 kg), Jordan imported 764 pounds (347 kg), and the United Arab Emi-rates imported 1,852 pounds (841 kg). These are similar to the amounts needed by the nonagricultural city-state of Singapore. Over the decades, this increasing food dependency has led many national planners in the region to try to accelerate agricultural growth, but they have had to deal with significant natural and social issues.

Water

The scarcity of fresh water is the main natural obstacle to greater food production in the region. With only 1.847 cubic yards (1,413 cubic meters) of fresh water available per capita in 2000, the MENA ranks well below the average of other regions. Drought, a recurrent phenomenon in the region, seriously affects agricultural production. Many of the desert areas receive less than 20 inches (50 cm) of rain per year, making non-irrigated agriculture extremely risky or impossible. Seasonal rainfall patterns are highly variable; only the shores of the Caspian and Black seas receive rainfall year round. Elsewhere, precipitation follows one of two seasonal patterns: (1) a winter maximum along the Mediterranean shore, in the Fertile Crescent, and in central and southern Iran, or (2) a summer monsoonal maximum in Southern Arabia and Sudan. Precipitation within these areas often varies considerably, and rain may fall at the wrong time during the planting cycle.

From the early 1960s, the total irrigated land area increased from about 30 million acres (12 million ha), some 15 percent of arable land, to about 42 million acres (17 million ha), or about 17 percent of arable land, in 1985. Irrigation resources are unequally distributed across countries. Roughly 34 percent of all irrigated land in the region is in Iran. In descending order, the four countries with the largest amount of irrigated land are Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq. Likewise, irrigated land as a percentage of arable land varies widely by country. At one extreme, virtually all (97%) of Egypt's farmland is irrigated, as is 65 percent of Israel's. By contrast, only 8 percent of Turkey's and 7 percent of Morocco's arable land is irrigated. Iran and Iraq irrigate roughly 33 to 40 percent of their arable land. Since irrigated land produces much more per acre than nonirrigated land, and produces crops of higher value, such as fruits and vegetables (as opposed to grains), these numbers understate the economic contribution of irrigated farming in the Middle East. In the MENA, the proportion of irrigated land has increased from 25.8 percent of crop-land in 1979 through 1981 to 35.5 percent in 1995 through 1997.

However, the development of irrigation has too often neglected long-term environmental issues, thereby jeopardizing the sustainability of the short-term gains from expanding irrigation. Two problems dominate: the neglect of drainage and the overexploitation of groundwater. Irrigation without drainage raises soil salinity, which reduces crop yields. Because irrigation raises output immediately, while neglect of drainage reduces it only after ten to twenty years, governments short of cash have often sacrificed the future by underinvesting in drainage. This problem has plagued most irrigation systems in the region as well as throughout the world. Overexploitation of groundwater is another example of heavily discounting the future. In many cases (Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula), this is fossil water, which is not renewable. In time, these ancient stores of water (similar to underground pools of petroleum) will be depleted and the farms and such ecosystems as oases that depend on such water will have to be abandoned.

It is often argued that since water is free to farmers they have no incentive to economize it. In fact, it is the giant irrigation projects, more than the farmers, that have overused this scarce resource. Two types of solutions were applied to this water problem: large-scale and small-scale infrastructure. Both are technical solutions and underestimate the social dimension of the problem. The large-scale solution is exemplified by such state projects as the Aswan High Dam (Egypt) and the Great Man-Made River (Libya). Drip irrigation is typical of the small-scale solution. Pioneered in Israel, it delivers precisely calibrated amounts of water to individual fruit trees or vegetables but costs at least three times as much to install as conventional flow irrigation. Drip techniques also require literature and trained technical personnel to operate them effectively. In addition,
water conservation imperatives have an impact on the choice of crops, and may reduce the allocation of land to water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, rice, sugarcane, and cotton.

The region's rain-fed farming systems generally employ Mediterranean dry-farming techniques, in which winter wheat or barley alternates with fallow and the grazing of sheep, goats, cattle, or camels. Also found in the region are systems that employ the dry-farming techniques of Sudan. The Sudanese-type systems run up against the problems of desertification and the relationship between semi-migratory cattle herders and sedentary farmers.

Cereal grains are the dominant crop in the Middle East, occupying more than 40 percent of the arable land. Wheat (indigenous to the northern Fertile Crescent) is planted on about 25 percent of the farmed area in any year and constitutes more than 50 percent of all regional cereal production. It stabilized at 55 percent in the period between 1961 and 2001 in Middle East but grew from 55 percent to 73 percent during the same period in North Africa. Barley, which is also indigenous, is especially well suited to drier areas and is a distant second. About one-third of all the land planted in wheat in less developed countries is found in the Middle East. Because of natural and social constraints, grain production has grown less rapidly than population in the region. Increasingly, greater output of grains and all other foodstuffs will require a shift from bringing additional land into cultivation to raising the output per unit of land. The only country with significant unexploited or underexploited areas of land is Sudan. Such intensive agricultural growth, however, is constrained not merely by water resources but by social conditions and economic policies.

Land Ownership

The principal social constraints to agricultural development have been unequal access to land and other problems concerning property rights; unfavorable terms of trade facing farmers (local but also international trade with Western countries); low levels of investment; and technical difficulties, such as those involved with irrigation.

Despite considerable differences between countries and regions, certain generalizations on land tenure may be made. Prior to land reform, land tenure was generally bimodal, with a small number of farmers owning large areas of land and a large number of others holding small parcels or working on the large ones as sharecroppers. In addition, states were and are active in shaping land-tenure patterns. Land reform has reduced but not eliminated unequal distributions of land. Governments have usually intervened in land-tenure patterns largely for political reasons, specifically to ruin their enemies. However, states often have had development strategies or programs that involved transferring resources from agriculture to industry and urban areas. Thus, states have tried to monopolize the distribution of farm inputs (fertilizer, equipment, and other resources necessary for agricultural production) and farm outputs (the actual agricultural products). Under injunctions from international organizations (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund), states throughout the region have retreated from land reform as part of a general regional economic trend giving an expanded scope to the private sector.

Governments often created state marketing monopolies as part of land reform programs, eventually allowing them to tax farmers by reducing the price of agricultural products below world market levels and raising the cost of inputs above world market levels. Such price policies, combined with macroeconomic and trade policies that distorted foreign exchange rates, weakened the incentives for farmers to produce the taxed crops. Not all crops were taxed, but grains and major export goods (e.g., cotton) usually were. These unfavorable pricing policies help explain the sluggish growth of grain output until the early 1980s. After that, governments increasingly recognized the need to offer farmers adequate incentives if the goal of food security was to be met. Taxes on farming have been reduced in many countries, and price policies have been improved. Less success has been achieved in improving life for small farmers (current policies bankrupt the family economy) and in improving macroeconomic policies that affect agriculture, such as inflation control and exchange-rate management.

Increased output per land unit is usually associated with greater use of higher yielding crop varieties (HYVs), which have been bred to be more responsive to fertilizer. The adoption rate for HYV wheat has been constrained by both limited water supplies and pricing policies. Only about 30 percent of Middle Eastern wheat fields are planted with HYVs, compared with nearly 80 percent in Latin America and Asia. By contrast, farm mechanization, especially tractor use, has spread rapidly, especially for such power-intensive tasks as land preparation. From 1979 through 1981, there were twelve tractors per thousand agricultural workers in the region, and from 1995 through 1997, 25 per thousand, which is higher than the world average. In 1960, there were some 2,470 acres (1,000 ha) for every tractor in Iran, but only some 247 acres (100 ha) per tractor in 1985. The use of harvesting machinery, such as combines, has spread more slowly than the use of tractors. The pattern of mechanization indicates that machines were substituted for animal labor as opposed to being substituted for human labor; animals had become far more valuable as producers of meat and milk than as work animals, and governments in the region often subsidized fuel.

However, mechanized techniques are also important as a way to economize on human labor, since recent emigration from the countryside has negatively affected the agricultural sector in many MENA countries. Everywhere, the proportion of agricultural laborers has declined. From 1960 to 1985, the number of farm workers fell in Algeria, Jordan, and Syria, though it remained roughly stable in Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, and Turkey. Labor migration, both from rural areas to cities and from non-oil to oil-exporting countries within the region, accounts for most of the decline in rural population figures. Education in the countryside has raised skill levels and expectations, leading many young people to abandon farming. Only if the educated youth are given the technology and incentives to succeed in agriculture will the MENA be able to mitigate water scarcity and even partially meet the growing demand for food.

Bibliography

Bessaoud, O.; Bourbouze, A.; Campagne, P.; et al. Problems of Rural Development in Dry Land Areas in the MENA Region (Middle East and North Africa). Montpellier, VT: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier, 2000.

Craig, G. M. The Agriculture of Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, Centre for Agricultural Strategy series, vol. 3, 1993.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The State of Food and Agriculture 2002. Rome: FAO, 2002.

Tuijl, Willem van. Improving Water Use in Agriculture, Experiences in the Middle East and North Africa. World Bank Technical Paper no. 201. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993.

World Bank. Reaching the Rural Poor, A Rural Development Strategy for the Middle East and North Africa Region. World Bank Departmental Working Paper. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications & Research, 2002.

World Bank. 2003 World Development Indicators Database. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003.

World Bank. The World Bank Annual Report 2003, volume 1, Year in Review. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003.

World Bank. World Development Report 2003, Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World, Transforming Institutions, Growth, and Quality of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

— ALAN R. RICHARDS UPDATED BY VINCENT BATTESTI

In 1500, between twothirds and three-quarters of European adults worked primarily in agriculture. The number who lived in the countryside and worked occasionally on farms was even higher—over 90 percent of the population in parts of eastern Europe. The numbers were still large in 1750, when agriculture employed half or two-thirds of the working population in many European countries.

Most Europeans had to labor on farms because agricultural technology was, by modern standards, rudimentary and agriculture itself unproductive. The majority of the population therefore toiled in fields and pastures to feed the minority who lived in manors and cities. Food shortages were common, at least for the poor, and bad harvests triggered food riots and sent the hungry roaming across the land in search of something to eat. In times of dearth, government officials diverted food to cities to prevent urban disturbances and sometimes even barred hungry paupers at city gates.

Agriculture was important for other reasons as well. Military leaders worried about feeding armies and providing them with horses, and with reason; otherwise soldiers would ransack homes. Farms were also a major source of income for the rich and powerful, who lived on the income from agricultural properties. The revenue might take the form of rent, of seignorial dues, or, in regions where serfdom still existed, of obligatory labor on noble estates. On top of all this, peasants paid the tithe to the church and taxes to fund the wars waged by early modern states.

Increasing the meager productivity of European agriculture became a great concern in the eighteenth century, when government officials and agricultural reformers argued about what would make farms produce more. Although there was no extraordinary technological revolution in farming until the nineteenth century, certain regions (such as Catalonia and the German North Sea Coast in the sixteenth century, or the Paris Basin and the wine-growing province of Beaujolais in the eighteenth) did experience increases in agricultural productivity in the early modern period. Two countries—England and the Netherlands—managed to forge ahead of the rest. Why farming advanced in England and the Netherlands, while most other European countries lagged behind, has been debated for over two hundred years, but new answers to this age-old question have begun to emerge from recent scholarship.

Who Owned the Land, Who Farmed It, and Who Had Rights to It

In most of early modern Europe, farmland was subject to a variety of rights and claims that made ownership complex. Technically, the land often belonged to aristocratic landlords (nobles, ecclesiastical institutions, or even merchants or officials), but, particularly in western Europe (eastern Europe was quite different), their rights were frequently limited to collecting insignificant fixed rents and relatively small dues and fees due them as seignorial lords. There were certainly exceptions to this rule, and most aristocratic landlords did have some plots—the demesne on their seignorial estates—that they could rent out for their full value. But it was the farmers themselves who exercised effective ownership of much of the agricultural land in western Europe, and what they did not own they usually rented. They had to pay the seignorial lord his dues and fees, use his mill, oven, or court; and perhaps provide him with a small amount of underpaid or forced labor. Typically, however, they could sell the land they possessed, bequeath it to their heirs, or sublease it. If they were tenants (rather than de facto owners), they would, of course, be unable to dispose of the property, and they would have to pay significant rent, perhaps to the seignorial lord (if, say, he were leasing out part of the demesne), or perhaps to some other landowner. Whatever the situation, how to farm the land was still their decision.

Most often these farmers were peasants. The most substantial ones had to amass large amounts of capital even if they were tenant farmers. They owned sheep, oxen or horses, plows and other implements, seed grain for planting, and money to hire workers or pay rent, and they saved so that their sons and daughters could be prosperous farmers, too. Other farmers had much less and could not even afford to pay cash rent. With no land of their own, they might enter into a sharecropping contract with a landlord, who would provide livestock, implements, and seed for farming in return for a large share of the crop (typically one-half) as rent. Nearly all the farmers (except for the most prosperous ones, who assumed the role of farm managers) worked on their own farms. They employed family labor, too—women milked cows, tended gardens, and cared for poultry, while even children helped bring in the grain harvest—and often hired long-term servants and temporary workers as well.

In eastern Europe, in contrast, the situation was almost reversed: there landlords managed to impose what is sometimes called a "second serfdom" on peasants during the early modern period. Peasants in much of the region (this is true in particular for what is now Poland, eastern Germany, western Hungary, and the Czech Republic) had exercised effective landownership and enjoyed considerable independence well into the fifteenth century. Thereafter, however, they lost their land to seignorial lords who incorporated it into their demesne, and much of their independence vanished, too. The landlords imposed heavy seignorial dues, forced the peasants to spend much of their time working for little or no pay on seignorial demesnes, and used their political and legal powers to keep them from fleeing or moving away. By the early seventeenth century, peasants in parts of eastern Germany had to work three days a week for their seignorial lords, while an average Polish peasant family might have to furnish two workers and oxen for the same amount of time every week.

Throughout Europe, peasant villages also exercised rights over the land. Villages often controlled access to pastures, waste, or unplowed fields that could be used for grazing. They could bar farmers from entering fields and vineyards to protect ripening crops from damage or theft, and they often determined when harvesting began. In eastern Europe, landlords weakened the villages when they imposed the second serfdom, but in western Europe the communities were strong enough to defend peasants' communal grazing rights against encroaching landlords. In doing so, the western villages often asserted that they were defending poorer villagers, who relied on the communal grazing rights because they had little or no land. Their claims were sometimes hollow, for in some instances the communal grazing land was the preserve of the community's richest peasants, who masked their monopoly in the language of concern for the poor.

Agricultural Practices and Technology

Bread was a staple of the European diet, grain was a major crop, and much European farmland was therefore devoted to growing wheat and rye, alongside oats for horses and barley for beer or soup. Even in major grain-producing areas, though, as much as a third of what farmers produced (after they fed the livestock) came from animals—in particular, wool and lamb from the herds of sheep that were sent to graze on fallow fields to fertilize them. In pastoral regions (such as Scandinavia, western parts of France and of Great Britain, and nearly any place where there were mountains), animals were even more important for the value of the products they provided: not only sheep, but herds of cattle, which were a source of beef, hides, and cheese. Nearly all farms, even small ones, had poultry in courtyards and pigs rooting for acorns in forests. Olives and fruit trees were important near the Mediterranean, and vineyards grew on hillsides and rocky soil even in northern climates. Even in areas that moved toward specialization in crops other than grain—parts of Normandy, for instance, which had shifted toward producing livestock—land was still often reserved for growing some wheat, rye, or oats. High transportation costs (particularly when there were no navigable waterways nearby) made it cheaper for most peasants to grow grain for their own consumption rather than specialize completely in stock raising or viticulture and then buying their food.

In much of Europe grains were grown in a three-year crop cycle known as the three-field system. Cultivation began with a year of fallow, when the land was fertilized with the manure of pasturing sheep and then plowed to rid it of weeds and incorporate organic matter into the soil. In the second year, wheat or rye was sowed, followed, in the third year, by barley, oats, or a fodder crop such as vetch or peas. The land thus produced crops two years out of three. If land was abundant, or if the topsoil was thin or infertile, then the fallow, with its fertilizing and plowing, might repeat every second year, yielding crops one year out of two—what was called the two-field system. In some instances, the fallow might last even longer, and weeds and brush that choked the field would be burned before cultivation resumed.

Where the three-field system predominated—as in much of northwestern Europe—fields were often unfenced and open in order to allow animals to pasture. Fencing would have, in any case, been extremely costly because many peasants farmed narrow strips of land scattered through the various fields: several strips in the field sown in wheat, for instance, several more in the oat field, and still others in the fallow. Open fields were common in some regions of two-field agriculture, too, though not in all. On average (there were exceptions to this rule when soil was fertile or agriculture relatively advanced) the fields ended up producing perhaps only four or five times the seed sown, a tenth of the yield today. The meager yields were one reason so many early modern Europeans had to work in agriculture; another was the enormous amount of labor required to bring in the harvest in an era before mechanical reapers. Armies of men, women, and children invaded the fields to cut the grain with sickles, gather it up, and stack it for drying and storage. The demand would drive up wages in summertime and draw workers from cities. Even then the work was not over, for the grain still had to be threshed before it could be ground into flour. Once the harvest was over, many of the hands would be idle, and that was part of the appeal of rural industry, which provided work doing tasks such as spinning.

The practices of early modern farmers were condemned by eighteenth-century agricultural reformers and, more recently, by modern historians. Most of the critics believe that early modern farmers were wasteful or could have produced more. Some have argued, for instance, that early modern farmers could have replaced the two-field system with the three-field one, which would have yielded crops two years out of three instead of just one year in two, or they could have planted fodder crops (such as alfalfa, sainfoin, or clover) on the fallow fields, which were supposed to add nutrients to the soil and support larger herds of animals, thereby increasing the supply of fertilizer for the grain fields. But these criticisms often fail to take costs and technical difficulties into account. Often the fodder crops did not suit the soil or pay for the additional costs they entailed, and the two-field system was usually a reasonable response to soil conditions or a relatively lower price of land. Shifting to a three-field system would actually have been wasteful or have diminished yields. Similarly, critics might ask why peasants reaped wheat with sickles, when scythes, which had long been used to mow grass or harvest oats, could do the task in much less time. However, the scythe required considerable strength, and even in the hands of a man it tended to knock the kernels off the wheat stalks. Only skilled reapers could wield it successfully, and it was cheaper to employ women, children, and unskilled men, who sawed wheat with sickles. Early modern farmers did not have our knowledge or technology, but they were certainly not wasteful.

The Success of Agriculture in England and the Netherlands

Although early modern yields were low, agricultural productivity did jump in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in two countries—the Netherlands and England. Although the increase, particularly in England, has often been termed an agricultural revolution, it would probably be better to reserve that term for the truly revolutionary changes—such as chemical fertilizers or the mechanical reaper—that transformed farming in the nineteenth century. Still, there is no denying that agricultural productivity did surge in the Netherlands and England. Perhaps the best measure is an index of what the average farmworker produced in each country, in which all farm products, from grain to meat, are lumped together. This index, constructed by the economic historian Robert Allen, shows that in 1750 Dutch and English farmworkers were producing between 59 and 175 percent more than their counterparts in all European countries but one. The one exception was the southern Netherlands—roughly speaking modern-day Belgium—where farmworkers had reached the same high level of productivity back in 1400.

Judging the productivity of whole countries has the disadvantage of glossing over great regional variations. France as a whole had lower agricultural productivity than England or the Netherlands, but there were parts of the country, such as the Paris Basin, where farms were just as productive as those anywhere in Europe. Similar statements could be made about the German North Sea Coast, Catalonia on the Iberian Peninsula, and parts of Italy. Still, whether one focuses on regions or whole countries, why agricultural productivity was so much higher in some places than in others must still be explained. The issue has attracted the most historical attention in England, for it was the first country to industrialize. Yet, back in 1600 its agricultural productivity (the Netherlands's too) was no different from that of most other European countries.

One common explanation traces England's success back to capitalist landlords, who remade the countryside in what were called enclosures. The enclosures involved putting an end to village control of farming practices, creating large farms by consolidating scattered fields, and fencing in open fields so that new crops could be planted on the fallow or arable land converted to pasture. The enclosures, historians have argued, boosted agricultural productivity by changing property rights, enlarging the scale of farming, and putting capitalist landlords who understood agricultural technology in charge. Elsewhere in Europe, agriculture remained in the hands of peasants, whose farms were too small and who resisted new crops and enclosures, either because they were fearful or ignorant or because poorer villagers wanted to protect their communal grazing rights. For one school of historians, it is population growth that kept most European farms too small and in the hands of backward peasants. For another, it was politics and the strength of the landlord class, for population growth was the same in England as in countries such as France, where agriculture lagged behind.

Recent work, however, casts doubt on these arguments. Enclosures did not boost agricultural productivity much in England, or on the rare occasions when they were tried in France. Bigger farms did not matter much either. They may have helped economize on labor, but most of the increase in English agricultural productivity came not from capitalist landlords, but from yeomen, who were really large-scale peasants, operating farms of sixty acres or so. Peasants as a whole were quite receptive to new agricultural techniques and they adopted them when it paid to do so. Similarly, overlapping property rights and village control of agriculture were less of an obstacle than historians thought. There were problems when land had to be drained or irrigated, but drainage and irrigation cannot account for the difference between French and English agriculture.

Excessive rent, taxes, and seignorial dues depressed agricultural productivity in some parts of Europe, but the damage they did was probably not as great as some historians imagined. Particular rental contracts, such as sharecropping, were less a cause of agricultural stagnation than a way for landlords to lend capital to poverty-stricken tenants. If rent, taxes, and seignorial dues together took less than a third of what a farmer produced, then they probably did not harm agricultural productivity either. If, however, they increased above a third, or if they dulled a farmer's incentives, then they could injure farming. That was a likely cause for the dismal agricultural performance in eastern Europe, where the second serfdom discouraged peasants' initiative and effort, and in Spain, where high taxes drove peasants to sell their property to nobles, who had little reason to farm well.

Warfare also did enormous harm to early modern agriculture. Beyond seizing food and horses, troops disrupted trade, and when frightened peasants fled from advancing armies, fields grew over before it was safe to return, necessitating months or even years of plowing and land clearance before fields could be cultivated again.

England (but not the Netherlands) escaped the worst army, at least on its own soil, but both countries had the added advantage of excellent transportation. The Netherlands built a great network of canals, and England constructed both canals and roads. In other countries, a road might be built to move troops, but in England and the Netherlands the infrastructure facilitated trade. Trade, whether by land or water, encouraged great agricultural specialization in the two countries, and, in turn, specialization increased productivity as farmers adapted crops to soil and prices and worked harder to buy new consumer goods available on the market. This specialization goes a long way toward explaining why agriculture in England and the Netherlands was productive and more innovative than in the rest of early modern Europe.

Bibliography

Abel, Wilhelm. Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. 3rd rev. ed. Stuttgart, 1978. Wealth of detail about central Europe for readers of German.

Allen, Robert C. "Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300–1800." European Review of Economic History 4 (2000): 1–26.

——. Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850. Oxford and New York, 1992. Best study of England.

Aston, T. H., and C. H. E. Philpin. The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1985.

De Vries, Jan. The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700. New Haven, 1974.

——. The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1976. Important for the role that transportation played.

Duplessis, Robert S. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1997. Good overview of agriculture throughout Europe with excellent bibliographies.

Finberg, H. P. R., and Joan Thirsk, eds. The Agrarian History of England and Wales. 8 vols. London, 1967–2000. Volumes 4 through 6 give exhaustive but somewhat dated coverage of the early modern period.

Hoffman, Philip T. Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815. Princeton, 1996.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The French Peasantry, 1450–1660. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Berkeley, 1987.

Meuvret, Jean. Le problème des subsistances à l'époque Louis XIV. 3 vols. Paris, 1977–1988. In French, but indispensible for understanding early modern agricultural technology.

—PHILIP T. HOFFMAN

The Agricultural Revolution was discovered, named, and studied in the 1920s through the 1940s. In 1950 it was renamed the Neolithic Revolution by (Vere) Gordon Childe, who is often considered the main early worker in the study of the Agricultural Revolution.

The Neolithic adoption of a new way of life was easy to explain before 1950. The theory was that farming is better than hunting and gathering; so when people found out about farming they stopped hunting and gathering and settled down in villages. Many scientists today, however, believe that farming is not better than hunting and gathering. People knew how to farm for a long time before they bothered to make it a main way of life. There is some evidence that people had known for at least 20,000 years that a single seed planted in the ground could grow into a plant with many seeds on it. Many people who knew how to farm never stopped hunting or gathering. Careful studies have shown that hunter-gatherers have more leisure and a better diet than farmers. People also settled down into permanent villages before they started farming.

Also, it seems very odd that the Agricultural Revolution occurred at quite close to the same time in the Near East, in Southeast Asia, in what is now Mexico, in South America, and in what is now China. Thus, a different explanation for the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution was required, and many archaeologists have offered their opinions. Here are some of the more popular theories as well as one or two idiosyncratic ideas.

• There Were Too Many People. Population pressure caused local environments to become exhausted, and people had to find new sources of food. Diminishing resources caused by population growth finally forced people to do the hard work of planting and harvesting. To replace lost game, people began to breed their own animals for meat and fiber (with milk as a side benefit). This theory does not explain why some low-density populations clearly started farming before the numbers grew (as in highland Mexico). Something else must be involved in this case. All in all, there is less evidence to support high populations before the Agricultural Revolution than there is reason to believe that populations grew rapidly after it.
• The Climate Changed. Childe thought that a drier climate induced the Agricultural Revolution in the Middle East by reducing the availability of game and wild food plants. People had to move to oases, where domestication was essential for survival. This idea ran afoul of subsequent studies showing that the Middle Eastern climate did not become drier at the right time. There are other climate-change theories. When the ice caps retreated, for example, people were forced to abandon their reliance on reindeer and mammoths, creatures of the edge of the ice and the tundra. With that major resource gone, some other source of food needed to be found. Similarly, the rise in sea level that accompanied the melting of the glaciers caused people in Southeast Asia to live on less land, resulting in the invention of agriculture there. The problem with the end-of-the-Ice-Age theory is that 1) the Ice Age ended 5000 years too soon for the Agricultural Revolution; and 2) it was not the people living near the edge of the ice or tundra who first started farming.
• People Moved to Town. One good reason for calling the change the Neolithic Revolution is that more than farming was involved. About a thousand years before agriculture started, people, especially those dependent on trade or on the storage and processing of wild grass seeds (such as wheat), began to live in permanent communities. Even if the region as a whole still had good food resources, the immediate vicinity of such communities would soon run short of both wild grasses and game. Domestication of plants and animals saved village life. The problem here is showing why people settled down.
• Plants Grow in Garbage. Plant remains tossed out in the garbage by people who had settled down sprouted. This produced new crops from the discarded materials, crops that could be easily harvested. People noticed this and developed the systematic way of throwing out parts of plants that we today term agriculture. Again, the problem is explaining why people lived in one place, near piles of garbage.
• Society Became Complex. The longer people were around, the more they developed complex societies that included traders (for which there is good evidence), specialists of all kinds, and people in charge. Such a society, with its division of labor and the need to have wealth that can be accumulated (by the people in charge), is forced into farming. Of course, some present-day or recent hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Native Americans of the northwest coast, developed complex societies without farming -- but they had salmon or some similar resource so they did not need to farm.
• It's What to Do in the Off-Season. Hunting and gathering, like farming, are seasonal. The seasons of good hunting and gathering often do not cover the whole year. During the time when not much else is going on, people can improve their food supply by planting crops. Crops that would be harvested after the good gathering season and before the good hunting season would presumably be favored. This fails to explain why people did not farm earlier or why so many started farming in such a short time period. A variation of this concept is that people engaged in hunting and gathering inevitably learn a lot about animals and plants. When they have learned enough, they see that it would be easier to grow their own than to go out and hunt for them. The problem with this theory is the studies that show that even in marginal environments, such as today's Kalahari Desert, it is easier and healthier to hunt for animals and plants than it is to grow them.
• It Did Not Happen. The last refuge of the historian or archaeologist faced with a major shift in society is to say that the change started much earlier, went on much longer, and lacks any moment in time that can be singled out. In this view, people replaced hunting and gathering with farming over tens of thousands of years. Even if this were true, which many would disagree with, it would not explain why people made such a change.
• It Just Happened. People did not set out to domesticate wheat or goats. Harvesting wheat over a period of years changed the nature of the wheat, since the seeds left behind by stone sickles remained on the plants that held on tightly to their seeds. Evolution then produced fields of wheat where most of the wheat clung tightly to the seeds. Such seeds were not good at producing next year's crop. As a result, people were forced to help the wheat by planting some of the seeds. Similarly, hunters killing larger goats produced an evolutionary shift to smaller goats. It became necessary to take steps to breed these smaller goats to produce enough meat. Domestication was the inevitable result of the farming and hunting practices of the early Neolithic. This theory is fairly reasonable for wheat, but not much good for peas and lentils, which seem to have been domesticated about the same time. There are logical gaps that are hard to fill in for the explanation of animal domestication.
• Space Creatures Started It. The proliferation of theories and the flaws in all of them sometimes makes one think that it would be just as well to contend that extraterrestrial beings, thought by people of the early Neolithic to be gods, went from place to place around Earth over a period from about 9000 to 5000 bce teaching people to stop hunting and gathering and to start farming. This theory is essentially the one espoused in most traditional farming societies -- that is, they have legends that tell them that the gods taught them how to raise crops. It has recently resurfaced in popular literature, although not held by any working archaeologist.

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Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants (i.e. crops) creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science.

Agriculture encompasses a wide variety of specialties and techniques, including ways to expand the lands suitable for plant raising, by digging water-channels and other forms of irrigation. Cultivation of crops on arable land and the pastoral herding of livestock on rangeland remain at the foundation of agriculture. In the past century there has been increasing concern to identify and quantify various forms of agriculture. In the developed world the range usually extends between sustainable agriculture (e.g. permaculture or organic agriculture) and intensive farming (e.g. industrial agriculture).

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, pesticides and fertilizers, and technological improvements have sharply increased yields from cultivation, and at the same time have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects.[^[1]] Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry such as intensive pig farming (and similar practices applied to the chicken) have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal cruelty and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production.[^[2]]

The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. In the 2000s, plants have been used to grow biofuels, biopharmaceuticals, bioplastics,^[3] and pharmaceuticals.^[4] Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, and meat. Fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo. Other useful materials are produced by plants, such as resins. Biofuels include methane from biomass, ethanol, and biodiesel. Cut flowers, nursery plants, tropical fish and birds for the pet trade are some of the ornamental products.

In 2007, about one third of the world's workers were employed in agriculture. Though in 2003 agricultural employees were fewer but due to the agricultural awareness it increased rapidly in 2008– the services sector overtook agriculture as the economic sector employing the most people worldwide.^[5] Despite the fact that agriculture employs over one-third of the world's population, agricultural production accounts for less than five percent of the gross world product (an aggregate of all gross domestic products).

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Overview 3 History 3.1 Ancient origins 3.2 Middle Ages 3.3 Modern era 4 Crop production systems 4.1 Crop statistics 5 Livestock production systems 6 Production practices 7 Processing, distribution, and marketing 8 Crop alteration and biotechnology 8.1 Genetic Engineering 8.2 Herbicide-tolerant GMO Crops 8.3 Insect-Resistant GMO Crops 8.4 Costs and Benefits of GMOs 9 Food safety and labeling 10 Environmental impact 10.1 Livestock issues 10.2 Land transformation and degradation 10.3 Eutrophication 10.4 Pesticides 10.5 Climate Change 11 Distortions in modern global agriculture 12 Agriculture and petroleum 12.1 Mitigation of effects of petroleum shortages 13 Policy 14 See also 14.1 Lists 15 References 15.1 Notes 15.2 Bibliography 15.3 External links

Etymology

The word agriculture is the English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, "a field",^[6] and cultūra, "cultivation" in the strict sense of "tillage of the soil".^[7] Thus, a literal reading of the word yields "tillage of a field / of fields"...

Overview

Agriculture has played a key role in the development of human civilization. Until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the human population labored in agriculture. Development of agricultural techniques has steadily increased agricultural productivity, and the widespread diffusion of these techniques during a time period is often called an agricultural revolution. A remarkable shift in agricultural practices has occurred over the past century in response to new technologies. In particular, the Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate made the traditional practice of recycling nutrients with crop rotation and animal manure less necessary.

The percent of the human population working in agriculture has decreased over time.

Synthetic nitrogen, along with mined rock phosphate, pesticides and mechanization, have greatly increased crop yields in the early 20th century. Increased supply of grains has led to cheaper livestock as well. Further, global yield increases were experienced later in the 20th century when high-yield varieties of common staple grains such as rice, wheat, and corn (maize) were introduced as a part of the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution exported the technologies (including pesticides and synthetic nitrogen) of the developed world to the developing world. Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the Earth would not be able to support its growing population, but technologies such as the Green Revolution have allowed the world to produce a surplus of food.^[8]

Agricultural output in 2005.

Many governments have subsidized agriculture to ensure an adequate food supply. These agricultural subsidies are often linked to the production of certain commodities such as wheat, corn (maize), rice, soybeans, and milk. These subsidies, especially when instituted by developed countries have been noted as protectionist, inefficient, and environmentally damaging.^[9] In the past century agriculture has been characterized by enhanced productivity, the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, selective breeding, mechanization, water contamination, and farm subsidies. Proponents of organic farming such as Sir Albert Howard argued in the early 1900s that the overuse of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers damages the long-term fertility of the soil. While this feeling lay dormant for decades, as environmental awareness has increased in the 2000s there has been a movement towards sustainable agriculture by some farmers, consumers, and policymakers. In recent years there has been a backlash against perceived external environmental effects of mainstream agriculture, particularly regarding water pollution,^[10] resulting in the organic movement. 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 (CAP) in 2005 to phase out commodity-linked farm subsidies,^[11] 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.

As of late 2007, several factors have pushed up the price of grain used to feed poultry and dairy cows and other cattle, causing higher prices of wheat (up 58%), soybean (up 32%), and maize (up 11%) over the year.^[12][13] Food riots have recently taken place in many countries across the world.^[14][15][16] An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa and into Asia and is causing major concern.^[17][18][19] Approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded.^[20] 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.^[21]

History

Main article: History of agriculture

A Sumerian harvester's sickle made from baked clay (ca. 3000 BC).

Since its development roughly 10,000 years ago,^[22] agriculture has expanded vastly in geographical coverage and yields. Throughout this expansion, new technologies and new crops were integrated. Agricultural practices such as irrigation, crop rotation, fertilizers, and pesticides were developed long ago, but have made great strides in the past century. The history of agriculture has played a major role in human history, as agricultural progress has been a crucial factor in worldwide socio-economic change. Wealth-concentration and militaristic specializations rarely seen in hunter-gatherer cultures are commonplace in societies which practice agriculture. So, too, are arts such as epic literature and monumental architecture, as well as codified legal systems. When farmers became capable of producing food beyond the needs of their own families, others in their society were freed to devote themselves to projects other than food acquisition. Historians and anthropologists have long argued that the development of agriculture made civilization possible.

Ancient origins

Further information: Neolithic Revolution

The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered in the wild. Independent development of agriculture occurred in northern and southern China, Africa's Sahel, New Guinea and several regions of the Americas. The eight so-called Neolithic founder crops of agriculture appear: first emmer wheat and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax.

By 7000 BC, small-scale agriculture reached Egypt. From at least 7000 BC the Indian subcontinent saw farming of wheat and barley, as attested by archaeological excavation at Mehrgarh in Balochistan. By 6000 BC, mid-scale farming was entrenched on the banks of the Nile. About this time, agriculture was developed independently in the Far East, with rice, rather than wheat, as the primary crop. Chinese and Indonesian farmers went on to domesticate taro and beans including mung, soy and azuki. To complement these new sources of carbohydrates, highly organized net fishing of rivers, lakes and ocean shores in these areas brought in great volumes of essential protein. Collectively, these new methods of farming and fishing inaugurated a human population boom that dwarfed all previous expansions and continues today.

By 5000 BC, the Sumerians had developed core agricultural techniques including large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized labor force, particularly along the waterway now known as the Shatt al-Arab, from its Persian Gulf delta to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Domestication of wild aurochs and mouflon into cattle and sheep, respectively, ushered in the large-scale use of animals for food/fiber and as beasts of burden. The shepherd joined the farmer as an essential provider for sedentary and semi-nomadic societies. Maize, manioc, and arrowroot were first domesticated in the Americas as far back as 5200 BC.^[23] The potato, tomato, pepper, squash, several varieties of bean, tobacco, and several other plants were also developed in the New World, as was extensive terracing of steep hillsides in much of Andean South America. The Greeks and Romans built on techniques pioneered by the Sumerians but made few fundamentally new advances. Southern Greeks struggled with very poor soils, yet managed to become a dominant society for years. The Romans were noted for an emphasis on the cultivation of crops for trade.

The Harvesters. Pieter Bruegel. 1565.

Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, farmers in North Africa, the Near East, and Europe began making use of agricultural technologies including irrigation systems based on hydraulic and hydrostatic principles, machines such as norias, water-raising machines, dams, and reservoirs. This combined with the invention of a three-field system of crop rotation and the moldboard plow greatly improved agricultural efficiency.

Modern era

Further information: British Agricultural Revolution and Green Revolution

This photo from a 1921 encyclopedia shows a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field.

Satellite image of a farm in Minnesota.

Infrared image of the farm. To the untrained eye, this image appears a hodge-podge of colours without any apparent purpose. But farmers are now trained to see yellows where crops are infested, shades of red indicating crop health, black where flooding occurs, and brown where unwanted pesticides land on chemical-free crops.

After 1492, a global exchange of previously local crops and livestock breeds occurred. Key crops involved in this exchange included the tomato, maize, potato, manioc, cocoa and tobacco going from the New World to the Old, and several varieties of wheat, spices, coffee, and sugar cane going from the Old World to the New. The most important animal exportation from the Old World to the New were those of the horse and dog (dogs were already present in the pre-Columbian Americas but not in the numbers and breeds suited to farm work). Although not usually food animals, the horse (including donkeys and ponies) and dog quickly filled essential production roles on western-hemisphere farms.

The potato became an important staple crop in northern Europe.^[24] Since being introduced by Portuguese in the 16th century,^[25] maize and manioc have replaced traditional African crops as the continent's most important staple food crops.^[26]

By the early 1800s, agricultural techniques, implements, seed stocks and cultivated plants selected and given a unique name because of its decorative or useful characteristics had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages. With the rapid rise of mechanization in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the form of the tractor, farming tasks could be done with a speed and on a scale previously impossible. These advances have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United States, Argentina, Israel, Germany, and a few other nations to output volumes of high-quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit. The Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to overcome previous constraints. In the past century agriculture has been characterized by enhanced productivity, the substitution of labor for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, 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 movement.

The cereals rice, corn, and wheat provide 60% of human food supply.^[27] Between 1700 and 1980, "the total area of cultivated land worldwide increased 466%" and yields increased dramatically, particularly because of selectively-bred high-yielding varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and machinery.^[27] For example, irrigation increased corn yields in eastern Colorado by 400 to 500% from 1940 to 1997.^[27]

However, concerns have been raised over the sustainability of intensive agriculture. Intensive agriculture has become associated with decreased soil quality in India and Asia, and there has been increased concern over the effects of fertilizers and pesticides on the environment, particularly as population increases and food demand expands. The monocultures typically used in intensive agriculture increase the number of pests, which are controlled through pesticides. Integrated pest management (IPM), which "has been promoted for decades and has had some notable successes" has not significantly affected the use of pesticides because policies encourage the use of pesticides and IPM is knowledge-intensive.^[27] Although the "Green Revolution" significantly increased rice yields in Asia, yield increases have not occurred in the past 15–20 years.^[27] The genetic "yield potential" has increased for wheat, but the yield potential for rice has not increased since 1966, and the yield potential for maize has "barely increased in 35 years".^[27] It takes a decade or two for herbicide-resistant weeds to emerge, and insects become resistant to insecticides within about a decade.^[27] Crop rotation helps to prevent resistances.^[27]

Agricultural exploration expeditions, since the late nineteenth century, have been mounted to find new species and new agricultural practices in different areas of the world. Two early examples of expeditions include Frank N. Meyer's fruit- and nut-collecting trip to China and Japan from 1916-1918^[28] and the Dorsett-Morse Oriental Agricultural Exploration Expedition to China, Japan, and Korea from 1929-1931 to collect soybean germplasm to support the rise in soybean agriculture in the United States.^[29]

In 2005, the agricultural output of China was the largest in the world, accounting for almost one-sixth of world share, followed by the EU, India and the USA, according to the International Monetary Fund.^{[citation needed]} Economists measure the total factor productivity of agriculture and by this measure agriculture in the United States is roughly 2.6 times more productive than it was in 1948.^[30]

Six countries - the US, Canada, France, Australia, Argentina and Thailand - supply 90% of grain exports.^[31] Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in numerous middle-sized countries, including Algeria, Iran, Egypt, and Mexico,^[32] may soon do the same in larger countries, such as China or India.^[33]

Crop production systems

Farmers work inside a rice field in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Cropping systems vary among farms depending on the available resources and constraints; geography and climate of the farm; government policy; economic, social and political pressures; and the philosophy and culture of the farmer.^[34][35] Shifting cultivation (or slash and burn) 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 (10-20). This fallow period is shortened if population density grows, requiring the input of nutrients (fertilizer or manure) 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 lead to the use of monocultures, when one cultivar is planted on a large acreage. Due to the low biodiversity, nutrient use is uniform, and pests tend to build up, necessitating the greater use of pesticides and fertilizers.^[35] Multiple cropping, in which several crops are grown sequentially in one year, and intercropping, when several crops are grown at the same time are other kinds of annual cropping systems known as polycultures.^[36]

In tropical environments, all of these cropping systems are practiced. In subtropical and arid environments, the timing and extent of agriculture may be limited by rainfall, either not allowing multiple annual crops in a year, or requiring irrigation. In all of these environments perennial crops are grown (coffee, chocolate) and systems are practiced such as agroforestry. In temperate environments, where ecosystems were predominantly grassland or prairie, highly productive annual cropping is the dominant farming system.^[36]

The last century has seen the intensification, concentration and specialization of agriculture, relying upon new technologies of agricultural chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides), mechanization, and plant breeding (hybrids and GMO's). In the past few decades, a move towards sustainability in agriculture has also developed, integrating ideas of socio-economic justice and conservation of resources and the environment within a farming system.^[37][38] This has led to the development of many responses to the conventional agriculture approach, including organic agriculture, urban agriculture, community supported agriculture, ecological or biological agriculture, integrated farming, and holistic management.

Crop statistics

Important categories of crops include grains and pseudograins, pulses (legumes), forage, and fruits and vegetables. Specific crops are cultivated in distinct growing regions throughout the world. In millions of metric tons, based on FAO estimate.

Top agricultural products, by crop types (million metric tons) 2004 data
Cereals	2,263
Vegetables and melons	866
Roots and Tubers	715
Milk	619
Fruit	503
Meat	259
Oilcrops	133
Fish (2001 estimate)	130
Eggs	63
Pulses	60
Vegetable Fiber	30
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)[39]

Top agricultural products, by individual crops (million metric tons) 2004 data
Sugar Cane	1,324
Maize	721
Wheat	627
Rice	605
Potatoes	328
Sugar Beet	249
Soybean	204
Oil Palm Fruit	162
Barley	154
Tomato	120
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)[39]

Livestock production systems

Main article: Livestock

Ploughing rice paddies with water buffalo, in Indonesia.

Animals, including horses, mules, oxen, camels, llamas, alpacas, and dogs, are often used to help cultivate fields, harvest crops, wrangle other animals, and transport farm products to buyers. Animal husbandry not only refers to the breeding and raising of animals for meat or to harvest animal products (like milk, eggs, or wool) on a continual basis, but also to the breeding and care of species for work and companionship. Livestock production systems can be defined based on feed source, as grassland - based, mixed, and landless.^[40] Grassland based livestock production relies upon plant material such as shrubland, rangeland, and pastures for feeding ruminant animals. Outside nutrient inputs may be used, however manure is returned directly to the grassland as a major nutrient source. This system is particularly important in areas where crop production is not feasible due to climate or soil, representing 30-40 million pastoralists.^[36] Mixed production systems use grassland, fodder crops and grain feed crops as feed for ruminant and monogastic (one stomach; mainly chickens and pigs) livestock. Manure is typically recycled in mixed systems as a fertilizer for crops. Approximately 68% of all agricultural land is permanent pastures used in the production of livestock.^[41] Landless systems rely upon feed from outside the farm, representing the de-linking of crop and livestock production found more prevalently in OECD member countries. In the U.S., 70% of the grain grown is fed to animals on feedlots.^[36] Synthetic fertilizers are more heavily relied upon for crop production and manure utilization becomes a challenge as well as a source for pollution.

Production practices

Road leading across the farm allows machinery access to the farm for production practices.

Tillage is the practice of plowing soil to prepare for planting or for nutrient incorporation or for pest control. Tillage varies in intensity from conventional to no-till. It may improve productivity by warming the soil, incorporating fertilizer and controlling weeds, but also renders soil more prone to erosion, triggers the decomposition of organic matter releasing CO₂, and reduces the abundance and diversity of soil organisms.^[42][43]

Pest control includes the management of weeds, insects/mites, and diseases. Chemical (pesticides), biological (biocontrol), mechanical (tillage), and cultural practices are used. Cultural practices include crop rotation, culling, cover crops, intercropping, composting, avoidance, and resistance. Integrated pest management attempts to use all of these methods to keep pest populations below the number which would cause economic loss, and recommends pesticides as a last resort.^[44]

Nutrient management includes both the source of nutrient inputs for crop and livestock production, and the method of utilization of manure produced by livestock. Nutrient inputs can be chemical inorganic fertilizers, manure, green manure, compost and mined minerals.^[45] Crop nutrient use may also be managed using cultural techniques such as crop rotation or a fallow period.^[46][47] Manure is used either by holding livestock where the feed crop is growing, such as in managed intensive rotational grazing, or by spreading either dry or liquid formulations of manure on cropland or pastures.

Water management is where rainfall is insufficient or variable, which occurs to some degree in most regions of the world.^[36] Some farmers use irrigation to supplement rainfall. In other areas such as the Great Plains in the U.S. and Canada, farmers use a fallow year to conserve soil moisture to use for growing a crop in the following year.^[48] Agriculture represents 70% of freshwater use worldwide.^[49]

Processing, distribution, and marketing

Main article: Food processing

Main article: Agricultural marketing

In the United States, food costs attributed to processing, distribution, and marketing have risen while the costs attributed to farming have declined. From 1960 to 1980 the farm share was around 40%, but by 1990 it had declined to 30% and by 1998, 22.2%. Market concentration has increased in the sector as well, with the top 20 food manufacturers accounting for half the food-processing value in 1995, over double that produced in 1954. As of 2000 the top six US supermarket groups had 50% of sales compared to 32% in 1992. Although the total effect of the increased market concentration is likely increased efficiency, the changes redistribute economic surplus from producers (farmers) and consumers, and may have negative implications for rural communities.^[50]

Crop alteration and biotechnology

Main article: Plant breeding

Tractor and Chaser bin.

Crop alteration has been practiced by humankind for thousands of years, since the beginning of civilization. Altering crops through breeding practices changes the genetic make-up of a plant to develop crops with more beneficial characteristics for humans, for example, larger fruits or seeds, drought-tolerance, or resistance to pests. Significant advances in plant breeding ensued after the work of geneticist Gregor Mendel. His work on dominant and recessive alleles gave plant breeders a better understanding of genetics and brought great insights to the techniques utilized by plant breeders. Crop breeding includes techniques such as plant selection with desirable traits, self-pollination and cross-pollination, and molecular techniques that genetically modify the organism.^[51] Domestication of plants has, over the centuries increased yield, improved disease resistance and drought tolerance, eased harvest and improved the taste and nutritional value of crop plants. Careful selection and breeding have had enormous effects on the characteristics of crop plants. Plant selection and breeding in the 1920s and 1930s improved pasture (grasses and clover) in New Zealand. Extensive X-ray an ultraviolet induced mutagenesis efforts (i.e. primitive genetic engineering) during the 1950s produced the modern commercial varieties of grains such as wheat, corn (maize) and barley.^[52][53]

The green revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield many folds by creating "high-yielding varieties". For example, average yields of corn (maize) in the USA have increased from around 2.5 tons per hectare (t/ha) (40 bushels per acre) in 1900 to about 9.4 t/ha (150 bushels per acre) in 2001. Similarly, worldwide average wheat yields have increased from less than 1 t/ha in 1900 to more than 2.5 t/ha in 1990. South American average wheat yields are around 2 t/ha, African under 1 t/ha, Egypt and Arabia up to 3.5 to 4 t/ha with irrigation. In contrast, the average wheat yield in countries such as France is over 8 t/ha. Variations in yields are due mainly to variation in climate, genetics, and the level of intensive farming techniques (use of fertilizers, chemical pest control, growth control to avoid lodging)..^[54][55][56]

Genetic Engineering

Main article: Genetic Engineering

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) are organisms whose genetic material has been altered by genetic engineering techniques generally known as recombinant DNA technology. Genetic engineering has expanded the genes available to breeders to utilize in creating desired germlines for new crops. After mechanical tomato-harvesters were developed in the early 1960s, agricultural scientists genetically modified tomatoes to be more resistant to mechanical handling. More recently, genetic engineering is being employed in various parts of the world, to create crops with other beneficial traits.

Herbicide-tolerant GMO Crops

Roundup-Ready seed has a herbicide resistant gene implanted into its genome that allows the plants to tolerate exposure to glyphosate. Roundup is a trade name for a glyphosate based product, which is a systemic, non-selective herbicide used to kill weeds. Roundup-Ready seeds allow the farmer to grow a crop that can be sprayed with glyphosate to control weeds without harming the resistant crop. Herbicide-tolerant crops are used by farmers worldwide. Today, 92% of soybean acreage in the US is planted with genetically-modified herbicide-tolerant plants.^[57] With the increasing use of herbicide-tolerant crops, comes an increase in the use of glyphosate based herbicide sprays. In some areas glyphosate resistant weeds have developed, causing farmers to switch to other herbicides.^[58][59] Some studies also link widespread glyphosate usage to iron deficiencies in some crops, which is both a crop production and a nutritional quality concern, with potential economic and health implications.^[60]

Insect-Resistant GMO Crops

Other GMO crops utilized by growers include insect-resistant crops, which have a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which produces a toxin specific to insects; insect-resistant crops protect plants from damage by insects, one such crop is Starlink. Another is cotton, which accounts for 63% of US cotton acreage.^[61]

Some believe that similar or better pest-resistance traits can be acquired through traditional breeding practices, and resistance to various pests can be gained through hybridization or cross-pollination with wild species. In some cases, wild species are the primary source of resistance traits; some tomato cultivars that have gained resistance to at least nineteen diseases did so through crossing with wild populations of tomatoes.^[62]

Costs and Benefits of GMOs

Genetic engineers may someday develop transgenic plants which would allow for irrigation, drainage, conservation, sanitary engineering, and maintaining or increasing yields while requiring fewer fossil fuel derived inputs than conventional crops. Such developments would be particularly important in areas which are normally arid and rely upon constant irrigation, and on large scale farms. However, genetic engineering of plants has proven to be controversial. Many issues surrounding food security and environmental impacts have risen regarding GMO practices. For example, GMOs are questioned by some ecologists and economists concerned with GMO practices such as terminator seeds,^[63][64] which is a genetic modification that creates sterile seeds. Terminator seeds are currently under strong international opposition and face continual efforts of global bans.^[65] Another controversial issue is the patent protection given to companies that develop new types of seed using genetic engineering. Since companies have intellectual ownership of their seeds, they have the power to dictate terms and conditions of their patented product. Currently, ten seed companies control over two-thirds of the global seed sales.^[66] Vandana Shiva argues that these companies are guilty of biopiracy by patenting life and exploiting organisms for profit^[67] Farmers using patented seed are restricted from saving seed for subsequent plantings, which forces farmers to buy new seed every year. Since seed saving is a traditional practice for many farmers in both developing and developed countries, GMO seeds legally bind farmers to change their seed saving practices to buying new seed every year.^[58][67]

Locally adapted seeds are an essential hertitage that has the potential to be lost with current hybridized crops and GMOs. Locally adapted seeds, also called land races or crop eco-types, are important because they have adapted over time to the specific microclimates, soils, other environmental conditions, field designs, and ethnic preference indigenous to the exact area of cultivation.^[68] Introducing GMOs and hybridized commercial seed to an area brings the risk of cross-pollination with local land races Therefore, GMOs pose a threat to the sustainability of land races and the ethnic heritage of cultures. Once seed contains transgenic material, it becomes subject to the conditions of the seed company that owns the patent of the transgenic material.^[69]

There is also concern that GMOs will cross-pollinate with wild species and permanently alter native populations’ genetic integrity; there are already identified populations of wild plants with transgenic genes. GMO gene flow to related weed species is a concern, as well as cross-pollination with non-transgenic crops. Since many GMO crops are harvested for their seed, such as rapeseed, seed spillage in is problematic for volunteer plants in rotated fields, as well as seed-spillage during transportation.^[70]

Food safety and labeling

Food security issues also coincide with food safety and food labeling concerns. Currently a global treaty, the BioSafety Protocol, regulates the trade of GMOs. The EU currently requires all GMO foods to be labeled, whereas the US does not require transparent labeling of GMO foods. Since there are still questions regarding the safety and risks associated with GMO foods, some believe the public should have the freedom to choose and know what they are eating and require all GMO products to be labeled.^[71]

Environmental impact

Main article: Environmental issues with agriculture

Agriculture imposes external costs upon society through pesticides, nutrient runoff, excessive water usage, and assorted other problems. A 2000 assessment of agriculture in the UK determined total external costs for 1996 of £2,343 million, or £208 per hectare.^[72] A 2005 analysis of these costs in the USA concluded that cropland imposes approximately $5 to 16 billion ($30 to $96 per hectare), while livestock production imposes $714 million.^[73] Both studies concluded that more should be done to internalize external costs, and neither included subsidies in their analysis, but noted that subsidies also influence the cost of agriculture to society. Both focused on purely fiscal impacts. The 2000 review included reported pesticide poisonings but did not include speculative chronic effects of pesticides, and the 2004 review relied on a 1992 estimate of the total impact of pesticides.

Livestock issues

A senior UN official and co-author of a UN report detailing this problem, Henning Steinfeld, said "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems".^[74] Livestock production occupies 70% of all land used for agriculture, or 30% of the land surface of the planet.^[75] It is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO₂ equivalents. By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5% of the CO₂. It produces 65% of human-related nitrous oxide (which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO_2,) and 37% of all human-induced methane (which is 23 times as warming as CO₂. It also generates 64% of the ammonia, which contributes to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems. Livestock expansion is cited as a key factor driving deforestation, in the Amazon basin 70% of previously forested area is now occupied by pastures and the remainder used for feedcrops.^[75] Through deforestation and land degradation, livestock is also driving reductions in biodiversity.

Land transformation and degradation

Land transformation, the use of land to yield goods and services, is the most substantial way humans alter the Earth's ecosystems, and is considered the driving force in the loss of biodiversity. Estimates of the amount of land transformed by humans vary from 39–50%.^[76] Land degradation, the long-term decline in ecosystem function and productivity, is estimated to be occurring on 24% of land worldwide, with cropland overrepresented.^[77] The UN-FAO report cites land management as the driving factor behind degradation and reports that 1.5 billion people rely upon the degrading land. Degradation can be deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, mineral depletion, or chemical degradation (acidification and salinization).^[36]

Eutrophication

Eutrophication, excessive nutrients in aquatic ecosystems resulting in algal blooms and anoxia, leads to fish kills, loss of biodiversity, and renders water unfit for drinking and other industrial uses. Excessive fertilization and manure application to cropland, as well as high livestock stocking densities cause nutrient (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus) runoff and leaching from agricultural land. These nutrients are major nonpoint pollutants contributing to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems.^[78]

Pesticides

Pesticide use has increased since 1950 to 2.5 million tons annually worldwide, yet crop loss due to pests has remained relatively constant.^[79] The World Health Organization estimated in 1992 that 3 million pesticide poisonings occur annually, causing 220,000 deaths.^[80] Pesticides select for pesticide resistance in the pest population, leading to a condition termed the 'pesticide treadmill' in which pest resistance warrants the development of a new pesticide.^[81] An alternative argument is that the way to 'save the environment' and prevent famine is by using pesticides and intensive high yield farming, a view exemplified by a quote heading the Center for Global Food Issues website: 'Growing more per acre leaves more land for nature'.^[82][83] However, critics argue that a trade-off between the environment and a need for food is not inevitable,^[84] and that pesticides simply replace good agronomic practices such as crop rotation.^[81]

Climate Change

Climate change has the potential to affect agriculture through changes in temperature, rainfall (timing and quantity), CO₂, solar radiation and the interaction of these elements.^[36][85] Agriculture can both mitigate or worsen global warming. Some of the increase in CO₂ in the atmosphere comes from the decomposition of organic matter in the soil, and much of the methane emitted into the atmosphere is due to the decomposition of organic matter in wet soils such as rice paddies.^[86] Further, wet or anaerobic soils also lose nitrogen through denitrification, releasing the greenhouse gas nitric oxide.^[87] Changes in management can reduce the release of these greenhouse gases, and soil can further be used to sequester some of the CO₂ in the atmosphere.^[86]

Distortions in modern global agriculture

See also: Agricultural subsidy

Differences in economic development, population density and culture mean that the farmers of the world operate under very different conditions.

A US cotton farmer may receive US$230^[88] in government subsidies per acre planted (in 2003), while farmers in Mali and other third-world countries do without. When prices decline, the heavily subsidised US farmer is not forced to reduce his output, making it difficult for cotton prices to rebound, but his Mali counterpart may go broke in the meantime.

A livestock farmer in South Korea can calculate with a (highly subsidized) sales price of US$1300 for a calf produced.^[89] A South American Mercosur country rancher calculates with a calf's sales price of US$120–200 (both 2008 figures).^[90] With the former, scarcity and high cost of land is compensated with public subsidies, the latter compensates absence of subsidies with economics of scale and low cost of land.

In the Peoples Republic of China, a rural household's productive asset may be one hectare of farmland.^[91] In Brazil, Paraguay and other countries where local legislature allows such purchases, international investors buy thousands of hectares of farmland or raw land at prices of a few hundred US$ per hectare.^[92][93][94]

Agriculture and petroleum

Since the 1940s, agriculture has dramatically increased its productivity, due largely to the use of petrochemical derived pesticides, fertilizers, and increased mechanization (the so-called Green Revolution). Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.^[95][96] This has allowed world population to grow more than double over the last 50 years. However, every energy unit delivered in food grown using modern techniques requires over ten energy units to produce and deliver,^[97] although this statistic is contested by proponents of petroleum-based agriculture.^[98] The vast majority of this energy input comes from fossil fuel sources. Because of modern agriculture's current heavy reliance on petrochemicals and mechanization, there are warnings that the ever decreasing supply of oil (the dramatic nature of which is known as peak oil^{[99][100][101][102]})^[103] will inflict major damage on the modern industrial agriculture system, and could cause large food shortages.^[104]

Modern or industrialized agriculture is dependent on petroleum in two fundamental ways: 1) cultivation—to get the crop from seed to harvest and 2) transport—to get the harvest from the farm to the consumer's refrigerator. It takes approximately 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen to fuel the tractors, combines and other equipment used on farms for cultivation or 17 percent of the nation's total energy use.^[105] Oil and natural gas are also the building blocks of the fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used on farms. Petroleum is also providing the energy required to process food before it reaches the market. It takes the energy equivalent of a half-gallon of gasoline to produce a two-pound bag of breakfast cereal.^[106] And that still does not count the energy needed to transport that cereal to market; it is the transport of processed foods and crops that consumes the most oil. The kiwi from New Zealand, the asparagus from Argentina, the melons and broccoli from Guatemala, the organic lettuce from California—most food items on the consumer's plate travel average of 1,500 miles just to get there.^{[107][108][109]}

Oil shortages could interrupt this food supply. The consumer's growing awareness of this vulnerability is one of several factors fueling current interest in organic agriculture and other sustainable farming methods. Some farmers using modern organic-farming methods have reported yields as high as those available from conventional farming (but without the use of fossil-fuel-intensive artificial fertilizers or pesticides. However, the reconditioning of soil to restore nutrients lost during the use of monoculture agriculture techniques made possible by petroleum-based technology will take time.^{[110][111][112][113]}

The dependence on oil and vulnerability of the U.S. food supply has also led to the creation of a conscious consumption movement in which consumers count the "food miles" a food product has traveled. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture defines a food mile as: "...the distance food travels from where it is grown or raised to where it is ultimately purchased by the consumer or end-user." In a comparison of locally-grown food and long-distance food, researchers at the Leopold Center found that local food traveled an average of 44.6 miles to reach its destination compared with 1,546 miles for conventionally-grown and shipped food.^[109]

Consumers in the new local food movement who count food miles call themselves "locavores"; they advocate a return to a locally-based food system where food comes from as close as possible, whether or not it is organic. Locavores argue that an organically-grown lettuce from California that is shipped to New York is still an unsustainable food source because of dependence on fossil fuels to ship it. In addition to the "locavore" movement, concern over dependence on oil-based agriculture has also dramatically increased interest in home and community gardening.

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2008)

Further information: Effect of biofuels on food prices

Farmers have also begun raising crops such as corn (maize) for non-food use in an effort to help mitigate peak oil. This has contributed to a 60% rise in wheat prices recently, and has been indicated as a possible precursor to "serious social unrest in developing countries."^[114] Such situations would be exacerbated in the event of future rises in food and fuel costs, factors which have already impacted the ability of charitable donors to send food aid to starving populations.^[115]

One example of the chain reactions which could be caused by peak oil issues involves the problems caused by farmers raising crops such as corn (maize) for non-food use in an effort to help mitigate peak oil. This has already lowered food production.^[114] This food vs fuel issue will be exacerbated as demand for ethanol fuel rises. Rising food and fuel costs has already limited the abilities of some charitable donors to send food aid to starving populations.^[115] In the UN, some warn that the recent 60% rise in wheat prices could cause "serious social unrest in developing countries."^[114][116] In 2007, higher incentives for farmers to grow non-food biofuel crops^[117] combined with other factors (such as over-development of former farm lands, rising transportation costs, climate change, growing consumer demand in China and India, and population growth)^[118] to cause food shortages in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Mexico, as well as rising food prices around the globe.^[119][120] 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.^[14][15][16]

Another major petroleum issue in agriculture is the effect of petroleum supplies will have on fertilizer production. By far the biggest fossil fuel input to agriculture is the use of natural gas as a hydrogen source for the Haber-Bosch fertilizer-creation process.^[121] Natural gas is used because it is the cheapest currently available source of hydrogen.^[122][123] When oil production becomes so scarce that natural gas is used as a partial stopgap replacement, and hydrogen use in transportation increases, natural gas will become much more expensive. If the Haber Process is unable to be commercialized using renewable energy (such as by electrolysis) or if other sources of hydrogen are not available to replace the Haber Process, in amounts sufficient to supply transportation and agricultural needs, this major source of fertilizer would either become extremely expensive or unavailable. This would either cause food shortages or dramatic rises in food prices.

Mitigation of effects of petroleum shortages

One effect oil shortages could have on agriculture is a full return to organic agriculture. In light of peak oil concerns, organic methods are much more sustainable than contemporary practices because they use no petroleum-based pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Some farmers using modern organic-farming methods have reported yields as high as those available from conventional farming.^{[110][111][112][113]} Organic farming may however be more labor-intensive and would require a shift of work force from urban to rural areas.^[124]

It has been suggested that rural communities might obtain fuel from the biochar and synfuel process, which uses agricultural waste to provide charcoal fertilizer, some fuel and food, instead of the normal food vs fuel debate. As the synfuel would be used on site, the process would be more efficient and may just provide enough fuel for a new organic-agriculture fusion.^[125][126]

It has been suggested that some transgenic plants may some day be developed which would allow for maintaining or increasing yields while requiring fewer fossil fuel derived inputs than conventional crops.^[127] The possibility of success of these programs is questioned by ecologists and economists concerned with unsustainable GMO practices such as terminator seeds,^[128][129] and a January 2008 report shows that GMO practices "fail to deliver environmental, social and economic benefits."^[130] While there has been some research on sustainability using GMO crops, at least one hyped and prominent multi-year attempt by Monsanto Company has been unsuccessful, though during the same period traditional breeding techniques yielded a more sustainable variety of the same crop.^[131] Additionally, a survey by the bio-tech industry of subsistence farmers in Africa to discover what GMO research would most benefit sustainable agriculture only identified non-transgenic issues as areas needing to be addressed.^[132] Nonetheless, some governments in Africa continue to view investments in new transgenic technologies as an essential component of efforts to improve sustainability.^[133]

Policy

Main article: Agricultural policy

Agricultural policy focuses on the goals and methods of agricultural production. At the policy level, common goals of agriculture include:

• Conservation
• Economic stability
• Environmental impact
• Food quality: Ensuring that the food supply is of a consistent and known quality.
• Food safety: Ensuring that the food supply is free of contamination.
• Food security: Ensuring that the food supply meets the population's needs.^[114][115]
• Poverty Reduction

See also

Main article: Outline of agriculture

Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Agriculture

• AFOLU, Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use.
• Artificial plant hormones
• Agricultural effects of peak oil
• Aeroponics (Indoor growing of food and plants)
• Agricultural economics
• Agricultural marketing
• Agroecology
• Agronomy for Sustainable Development
• Biopesticides
• Chitosan (Natural Biocontrol for Agricultural & Horticultural use)
• Climate change and agriculture
• Contract farming
• Consumption-labour-balance principle
• Crofting
• Doha Development Round
• Ecoagriculture
• Feed additive
• Food Studies
• Good agricultural practice
• Green Revolution
• Industrial agriculture
• Organic farming
• Permaculture
• Permaforestry
• Rural economics
• Smallholder agriculture
• Timeline of agriculture and food technology
• Wildculture
• Vertical Farming

Lists

• Agriculture in present-day nations and states
• List of basic agriculture topics
• List of countries by GDP sector composition - a breakdown that includes Agricultural sector information
• List of domesticated animals
• List of subsistence techniques
• List of sustainable agriculture topics
• No-till farming

References

Notes

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3. ^ Brickates Kennedy, Val (October 16, 2007). "Plastics that are green in more ways than one". MarketWatch (New York: The Wall Street Journal). http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bioengineers-aim-to-cash-in-on-plants-that-make-green-plastics. 
4. ^ "Growing Plants for Pharmaceutical Production vs. for Food and Feed Crops". bio.org. Washington DC: Biotechnology Industry Organization. http://www.bio.org/healthcare/pmp/factsheet5.asp. Retrieved October 2, 2009. 
5. ^ "Key Indicators of the Labour Market Programme". International Labour Organization. September 7, 2009. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/kilm/index.htm. 
6. ^ Latin Word Lookup
7. ^ Latin Word Lookup
8. ^ Barrionuevo, Alexei; Bradsher, Keith (December 8, 2005). "Sometimes a Bumper Crop Is Too Much of a Good Thing". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/business/worldbusiness/08farmers.html. 
9. ^ Schneider, Keith (September 8, 1989). "Science Academy Recommends Resumption of Natural Farming". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/08/us/science-academy-recommends-resumption-of-natural-farming.html. 
10. ^ The World Bank (1995), Overcoming Agricultural Water Pollution in the European Union.
11. ^ European Commission (2003), CAP Reform.
12. ^ "At Tyson and Kraft, Grain Costs Limit Profit". The New York Times. Bloomberg. September 6, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/business/06tyson.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/W/Wheat. 
13. ^ McMullen, Alia (January 7, 2008). "Forget oil, the new global crisis is food". Financial Post (Toronto). http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343. 
14. ^ ^{a b} Watts, Jonathan (December 4, 2007). "Riots and hunger feared as demand for grain sends food costs soaring", The Guardian (London).
15. ^ ^{a b} Mortished, Carl (March 7, 2008)."Already we have riots, hoarding, panic: the sign of things to come?", The Times (London).
16. ^ ^{a b} Borger, Julian (February 26, 2008). "Feed the world? We are fighting a losing battle, UN admits", The Guardian (London).
17. ^ McKie, Robin; Rice, Xan (April 22, 2007). "Millions face famine as crop disease rages", The Observer' (London).
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56. ^ Conversion note: 1 bushel of wheat = 60 pounds (lb) ≈ 27.215 kg. 1 bushel of maize = 56 pounds ≈ 25.401 kg
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104. ^ a list of over 20 published articles and books supporting this thesis can be found here [2] in the section: "Food, Land, Water, and Population")
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110. ^ ^{a b} Realities of organic farming
111. ^ ^{a b} http://extension.agron.iastate.edu/organicag/researchreports/nk01ltar.pdf
112. ^ ^{a b} Organic Farming can Feed The World!
113. ^ ^{a b} Organic Farms Use Less Energy And Water
114. ^ ^{a b c d} Record rise in wheat price prompts UN official to warn that surge in food prices may trigger social unrest in developing countries
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129. ^ Pillarisetti, R.; Radel, Kylie (June 2004). Economic and Environmental Issues in International Trade and Production of Genetically Modified Foods and Crops and the WTO. 19. Journal of Economic Integration. pp. 332–352. http://sejong.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,6,10;journal,15,43;linkingpublicationresults,1:109474,1. 
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Bibliography

Coffee Plantation up São João do Manhuaçu City mouth - Minas Gerais State - Brazil.

• Alvarez, Robert A. (2007). "The March of Empire: Mangos, Avocados, and the Politics of Transfer". Gastronomica, Vol. 7, No. 3, 28-33. Retrieved on November 12, 2008.
• Bolens, L. (1997). "Agriculture" in Selin, Helaine (ed.), Encyclopedia of the history of Science, technology, and Medicine in Non Western Cultures. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, pp. 20–22.
• Collinson, M. (ed.) A History of Farming Systems Research. CABI Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-85199-405-9
• Crosby, Alfred W.: The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Praeger Publishers, 2003 (30th Anniversary Edition). ISBN 0-275-98073-1
• Davis, Donald R.; Riordan, Hugh D. (2004). "Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999". Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 23, No. 6, 669-682.
• Friedland, William H.; Barton, Amy (1975). "Destalking the Wily Tomato: A Case Study of Social Consequences in California Agricultural Research". Univ. California at Sta. Cruz, Research Monograph 15.
• Mazoyer, Marcel; Roudart, Laurence (2006). A history of world agriculture : from the Neolithic Age to the current crisis. Monthly Review Press, New York. ISBN 1-583-67121-8
• Saltini A. Storia delle scienze agrarie, 4 vols, Bologna 1984-89, ISBN 88-206-2412-5, ISBN 88-206-2413-3, ISBN 88-206-2414-1, ISBN 88-206-2414-1
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• Watson, A.M. (1983). Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World, Cambridge University Press.
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• Wickens, G.M. (1976). "What the West borrowed from the Middle East", in Savory, R.M. (ed.) Introduction to Islamic Civilization. Cambridge University Press.

External links

• The National Agricultural Law Center

At Wikiversity you can learn more about Agriculture at: The School of Agriculture

• Agriculture from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• Agriculture and Rural development from the World Bank
• Index to the Manuscript Collections Special Collections, National Agricultural Library
• International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)
• NIOSH Agriculture Page - safety laws, tips, and guidelines
• U.S. House Committee on Agriculture - Glossary of agricultural terms, programs and laws
• UKAgriculture.com - Advance the education of the public in all aspects of agriculture, the countryside and the rural economy
• Agricultural Products - portal about agro products and agriculture industry.
• Guide to collections containing information on agriculture at the Eisenhower Presidential Library
• Collection of Agriculture Dictionaries

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - landbrug, jordbrug

Nederlands (Dutch)
landbouw

Français (French)
n. - agriculture

Deutsch (German)
n. - Landwirtschaft

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γεωργία

Italiano (Italian)
agricoltura, agraria

Português (Portuguese)
n. - agricultura (f)

Русский (Russian)
сельское хозяйство, обработка земли, фермерство

Español (Spanish)
n. - agronomía, agricultura

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - jordbruk

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
农业, 农耕, 农艺, 农学

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 農業, 農耕, 農藝, 農學

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 농업, 농학

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 農業, 農芸, 農学

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) زراعه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חקלאות‬

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