Agriculture is the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops, and raising livestock. It includes the preparation of plant and animal products for people to use and their distribution to markets.
Agriculture provides most of the world’s food and fabrics. Cotton, wool, and leather are all agricultural products. Agriculture also provides wood for construction and paper products.
These products, as well as the agricultural methods used, may vary from one part of the world to another.
Start of Agriculture
Over centuries, the growth of agriculture supported the development of cities. Before agriculture became widespread, hunting and gathering was how people fed themselves. Between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, people gradually learned how to grow cereal and root crops, and settled down to a life based on farming.
Eventually, much of Earth’s population became dependent on agriculture. Scholars are not sure why this shift to farming took place, but it may have occurred because of climate change.
When people began growing crops, they also continued to adapt animals and plants for human use. Adapting wild plants and animals for people to use is called domestication. Hunter-gatherers began to domesticate animals and change the natural environment to grow more food even before settled farming became widespread.
Barley, wheat, legumes, vetch, and flax were among the first plants to be domesticated.
The first domesticated animals were dogs, which were used for hunting. Sheep and goats were probably domesticated next. People also domesticated cattle and pigs. The predecessors of most of these animals had once been hunted for hides and meat. Many of them also became sources of milk, cheese, and butter. Eventually, people used domesticated animals such as oxen for plowing, pulling, and transportation.
Agriculture enabled people to produce surplus food. They could use this extra food when crops failed or trade it for other goods.
Agriculture kept formerly nomadic people near their fields and led to the development of permanent villages. These became linked through trade. New economies were so successful in some areas that cities developed. The earliest societies based on intensive agriculture arose in the Fertile Crescent (which spans the Levant, modern-day Turkey, and Iran) and along the Nile River in Egypt. Other very early agricultural societies developed independently in Central America, East Asia, the Indus Valley, and West Africa.
