Agriculture as an Art, Science, Business, Profession and Industry

Agriculture as an Art requires ability to discern beauty and unsightliness. It is always said
beauty depends upon the beholder. A good Agriculturist must recognize the fact that animals
and plants have distinctive set of habits and characteristics respectively. For instance, chicken
always look roast to sleep at night and rice needs more water during the growing stage. The
knowledge of the characteristics of plants and the habits of animals will make it easy for the
farmer to grow crops and care for his animals.

Agriculture is a science, it adopts the scientific method. In farming crops and/or raising
of animals, there are always sets of steps or procedure to follow. The farmer has to know the
different life stages of animals and ascertain what appropriate types and amount of feeds to be
given. In crops or plants, there is time for sowing, transplanting, fertilizing, spraying, weeding
and harvesting. These farming activities are undertaken one after the other. Improvement in
farming needs to be back up by research so as not to remain traditional. New information has
to surface to develop farming systems and technologies to increase and sustain production.

Agriculture is a business, it needs marketing which is an important step that will

determine the profitability of an agricultural products be it from animal or plant enterprise.
Usually, there is difficulty in marketing agricultural products unless there are existing contract
buyers. Special processing/postharvest procedures and preservation have to be done to
lengthen the shelf life of the products to improve their value that are acceptable to the
consumers. Storage facilities are to be provided to maintain the quality of the products. Good
quality products command a better price in the market. Agriculturist with entrepreneurial skills
could easily start a business with a good opportunity for improvement and success.

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Agriculturist as a profession, has a wider placement in private and public field. A
professional Agriculturist can be employed as farm managers, technologist, inspectors,
supervisors, teachers in the elementary, secondary and tertiary schools, bank appraisers,
extension workers and many more. For those with capital and land area to farm, they can be
encouraged to become self-employed to provide employment to other graduates and have
more opportunities to grow in the profession.

Agriculture as an industry, provides raw materials for processing and make the
industrial machineries operational. Exportable products are produced by the industries which
generate dollars and enhance the economy of the country. About 15-20 % of the gross
domestic products (GDP) come from agriculture.

Unit II - History: Growth & Development of Agriculture

 The history of agriculture may be divided into six broad periods of unequal length,
differing widely in date according to different regions of the world.

1. Prehistoric Agriculture
2. Agriculture in the Roman period,
3. Feudal Agriculture
4. Agricultural Revolution
5. Industrial Agriculture
6. Modern Agriculture

A countertrend to industrial agriculture, known as sustainable (exploiting natural

resources without destroying ecological balance of an area), agriculture or organic farming,
may represent yet another period in agricultural history.

Prehistoric Agriculture
PREHISTORIC
For most of human history, we were “hunter-gatherers”, so early agriculture was
characterized by hunting and gathering of food. Early farmers were, archaeologists agree,
largely of Neolithic culture (during the period of stone age, between about 8000 BC and 5000
BC, characterized by the development of settled agriculture and use of polished stone tools and
weapon). 10, 000 years ago, we began to plant crops and domesticate animals which is a way to
make our food supply more accessible and predictable.

Early agriculture started in fertile valley of mesophotamia – in the fertile and alluvial soil
along the river bank. The birth of agriculture can be defined as the moment we stop chasing
our food and started raising or planting it. Sites occupied by such people are located in
Southwestern Asia in what are now Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey ; in
Southeastern Asia, in what is now Thailand; in Africa, along the Nile River in Egypt; and in
Europe, along the Danube River and in Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly (historic regions of
Southeastern Europe). Early centers of agriculture have also been identified in the Huang He
(Yellow River) area of China; the Indus River valley of India and Pakistan; and the Tehuacán
Valley of Mexico, Northwest of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The dates of domesticated plants
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and animals vary with the regions, but most predate the 6th millennium BC, and the earliest
may date from 10,000 BC.
As humans have advanced agriculture, agriculture has reshaped human civilization. As we
enter into the new era of human history, agriculture faces new challenges and new
responsibilities.

• Important dates:
 7,000 BC – they begun to domesticate animals such as sheep pigs and goats, a thousand
years later, they domesticated cattle.
 8,500 BC – humans in the fertile crescent (an area that strengthens through modern day
Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Iraq) slowly started to plant grains, instead of gathering them
from the wild.
 Before the advent of Agriculture, humans were nomadic, travelling constantly in search
of wild animals and grains.
Scientists have carried out carbon-14 testing of animal and plant remains and have
dated finds of the following animals:
1. Llama and Alpaca were domesticated in the Andean regions of South America by
the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.

2. Horses around 4000 BC in central Asia.

3. Cattle domesticated in the 6th millennium BC in Northeastern Iran;
4. Onagers, or Asses, at 7000 BC in Iraq;
5. Pigs at 8000 BC in Thailand and 7000 BC in Thessaly;
6. Goats at 8000 BC in central Iran;
7. Sheep domesticated at 9000 BC in northern Iraq;

For the plants, according to carbon dating:

1. Millet and rice in China and Southeast Asia by 5500 BC;

2. Legumes were found in Thessaly and Macedonia dated as early as 6000 BC.
3. Wheat and barley were domesticated in the Middle East in the 8th millennium BC;
 4. Squash in Mexico about 8000 BC.
5. Flax was grown and apparently woven into textiles early in the Neolithic Period.
With the rise of Agriculture as predictable centralized source of food, they suddenly stay
put, cities begun to form. Agriculture did not only change the diet but human civilization as
well. Over the next 8, 500 years, agriculture evolved relatively slowly. Transformation of wild
plants, domestication of wild animals occurred.
The transition from hunting and food gathering to dependence on food production was
gradual, and in a few isolated parts of the world this transition has not yet been accomplished.
Crops and domestic meat supplies were augmented by fish and wildfowl as well as by the meat
of wild animals. The farmer began, most probably, by noting which of the wild plants were
edible or otherwise useful and learned to save the seed and to replant it in cleared land.
Lengthy cultivation of the most prolific and hardiest plants yielded stable strains. Herds of goats
and sheep were assembled from captured young wild animals, and those with the most useful
traits—such as small horns and high milk production—were bred. The wild aurochs was the
ancestor of European cattle, and an Asian wild ox of the zebu, was the ancestor of the humped
cattle of Asia. Cats, dogs, and chickens were also domesticated very early.
Neolithic farmers lived in simple dwellings—caves and small houses of sun baked mud
brick or reed and wood. These homes were grouped into small villages or existed as single
farmsteads surrounded by fields, sheltering animals and humans in adjacent or joined buildings.
In the Neolithic Period, the growth of cities such as Jericho (founded about 9000 BC) was
stimulated by the production of surplus crops.
Pastoralism (individual country living) may have been a later development. Evidence
indicates that mixed farming, combining cultivation of crops and stock rising, was the most
common Neolithic pattern. Nomadic herders, however, roamed (wander aimlessly) the steppes
(tree less plains covered by grasses} of Europe and Asia, where the horse and camel were
domesticated.
The earliest tools of the farmer were made of wood and stone. They included the stone
adz, an ax like tool with blades at right angles to the handle, used for woodworking; the sickle
or reaping knife with sharpened stone blades, used to gather grain; the digging stick, used to
plant seeds and, with later adaptations, as a spade or hoe; and a rudimentary plow, a modified
tree branch used to scratch the surface of the soil and prepare it for planting. The plow was
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later adapted for pulling by oxen. 2

The hilly areas of Southwestern Asia and the forests of Europe had enough rain to
sustain agriculture, but Egypt depended on the annual floods of the Nile River to replenish soil
moisture and fertility. The inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers in the Middle East also depended on annual floods to supply irrigation water. Drainage
was necessary to prevent the erosion of land from the hillsides through which the rivers flowed.
The farmers who lived in the area near the Huang He developed a system of irrigation and
drainage to control the damage caused to their fields in the flood plain of the meandering river.
Although Neolithic settlements were more permanent than the camps of hunting
peoples, villages had to be moved periodically in some areas when the fields lost their
fertility from continuous cropping. This was most necessary in northern Europe, where fields
were produced by the slash-and-burn method of clearing. Settlements along the Nile River,
however, were more permanent, because the river deposited fertile silt annually.
Gradual advancement is summarized as follows:

• The stone age –tools used were made of stones.

• During bronze and iron ages, stone and wooden tools were replaced by stronger and
most efficient metal tools.

• However farming remained time-and labor intensive pursuit of 80% of the world’s
population.