Agriculture

Agriculture or farming is a practice of cultivating plants as alive as livestock. Agriculture was the key developing in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated vintage created food surpluses that enabled people to symbolize in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep, in addition to cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture.

The major agricultural products can be loosely grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials such(a) as rubber. Food classes include cereals grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, meat, milk, eggs, and fungi. Over one-third of the world's workers are employed in agriculture,only to the service sector, although in recent decades, the global trend of a decreasing number of agricultural workers continues, especially in coding countries, where smallholding is being overtaken by industrial agriculture and mechanization that brings an enormous crop yield increase.

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such(a) as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments go forward to sharply increased crop yields, but pretend ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and contemporary practices in animal husbandry earn similarly increased the output of meat but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues increase contributions to global warming, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such(a) as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and global warming, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some are banned incountries.

Contemporary agriculture

From the twentieth century, intensive agriculture increased productivity of crops. It substituted synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for labour, but caused increased water pollution, and often involved farm subsidies. In recent years there has been a backlash against the environmental effects of conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic, regenerative, and sustainable agriculture movements. One of the major forces gradual this movement has been the European Union, which number one certified organic food in 1991 and began alter of its Common Agricultural Policy CAP in 2005 to phase out commodity-linked farm subsidies, also so-called as decoupling. The growth of organic farming has renewed research in choice technologies such(a) as integrated pest management, selective breeding, and controlled-environment agriculture. Recent mainstream technological developments add genetically modified food. Demand for non-food biofuel crops, development of former farm lands, rising transportation costs, climate change, growing consumer demand in China and India, and population growth, are threatening food security in many parts of the world. The International Fund for Agricultural Development posits that an increase in smallholder agriculture may be factor of the written to concerns about food prices and overall food security, precondition the favorable experience of Vietnam. Soil degradation and diseases such as stem rust are major concerns globally; approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. By 2015, the agricultural output of China was the largest in the world, followed by the European Union, India and the United States. Economists degree the total factor productivity of agriculture and by this degree agriculture in the United States is roughly 1.7 times more productive than it was in 1948.

Following the three-sector theory, the number of people employed in agriculture and other primary activities such as fishing can be more than 80% in the least developed countries, and less than 2% in the nearly highly developed countries.Since the Industrial Revolution, numerous countries have submission the transition to developed economies, and the proportion of people workings in agriculture has steadily fallen. During the 16th century in Europe, for example, between 55 and 75% of the population was engaged in agriculture; by the 19th century, this had dropped to between 35 and 65%. In the same countries today, the figure is less than 10%. At the start of the 21st century, some one billion people, or over 1/3 of the usable work force, were employed in agriculture. It constitutes approximately 70% of the global employment of children, and in many countries employs the largest percentage of women of all industry. The improvement sector overtook the agricultural sector as the largest global employer in 2007.