AGRICULTURE
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AGRICULTURE
Agriculture meant the birth of civilisation. Soil: a living structure.Needs of plants. Farming techniques. Future of farming.
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INTRODUCTION
AGRICULTURE is the activity of cultivating the ground in order to grow determined plants.
Many years ago, man ate the animals he hunted and complemented his diet by eating wild plants.
Then man planted seeds and harvested them.
People remained in the same place and constructed more solid-dwellings. Houses were built together. The first cities appeared.
The human population increased spectarcularly. Technology developed.
Urban life became complex: laws were made. Civilisation emerged.
SOIL
Soil is a living structure which is in balance with conditioning elements.
The formation of soil.
Soil is modified by man’s action.
Living-rock itself, climate, weather and living-beings all contribute towards the formation of fertile soil in agriculture.
Plants’ needs. Nutrients.
Climate has most influence in the formation of soil.
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Farming started in those rainy places where wild wheat and barley grew in a mountainous region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indo Valley.
The technique of farming went beyond the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Later the first great civilisations were born along the banks of the River Nile in Egypt.
Cultivation of millet and rice.
Incas and Aztecas developed their own farming techniques.
In America, for the very first ever, corn, kidney beans, tomatoes, potatoes, gourds and cocoa were grown.
The invention of the plough and yoke increased farming productivity.
In the Middle Ages was put into practice one year’s fallow.
With the 4-cycle rotation system soil became more fertile.
Fertilisation of the soil with manure.
Asia has a long and precise knowledge on rice.
The wide-spread use of sophisticated technology has permitted a spectectacular increase in world food productivity.
INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY
Different ways of irrigation farming: flooding of fields, construction of drainage ditches.
Water-sprinkles.
The drop-by-drop system.
Fertilisation with nutrients.
Natural fertilisers: peat, compost, mire and dung.
Synthetic fertilisers.
Insects are farmers’ most feared enemies.
Biotechnology has created more resistant plants.
Insecticides to combact insect plagues. They influence upon the chain-food.
Stabilising the population level and ensuring their correct food-supply are, without doubt, two of the most difficult challenges with which mankind has ever been faced. |
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