What is Agriculture? 

Have you wondered where your food ingredients come from? Wheat, rice, pulses, vegetables, spices, and fruits form a significant component of human food. Where do they come from? Who grows them, and how are these converted to editable form? Most food items you eat undergo many processes before they reach you. They are grown or taken from plants, packed, processed, transported, and sold before eating them. Thus we see that a large number of activities take place between agriculture and final consumption.

These activities are grouped into three types:

Primary Activities: These include all activities which involve the extraction, collection, and production of natural resources.Example: Agriculture, fishing, mining, etc.

Secondary Activities: These activities are those which involve processing resources obtained from the primary activity. Example: Food processing, packing industry, manufacturing industry like steel plants, oil refineries, etc.

Tertiary Activities: These activities facilitate both primary and secondary actions and are also called 'services.' Example: Transportation, trading, etc. This chapter shall limit itself to the primary activity of agriculture.

AGRICULTURE AS A PRIMARY ACTIVITY

If you look at it closely, it is a basis for survival. Agriculture primarily is for food, although it also gives us other resources like cotton for our clothes. This activity also encompasses growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, and rearing of livestock, besides grains, pulse, and spices. Nearly half the world's population is directly connected with the primary activity of agriculture. Agriculture is dependent on soil, climate, and water resources. Plants do not grow on rocks, deserts, saline areas, and snowbound areas. Because of this, the earlier civilizations were settled close to fertile regions in river valleys and plains where they could grow their food and maintain their animals or livestock. The land where crops are grown is known as arable land. With newer developments of technology and techniques, land areas that were earlier considered unfit for farming are being made arable even if in small parts or for short durations of time.

FARM SYSTEM

Agriculture, also commonly known as farming, can be considered a system. This needs two types of inputs-physical inputs and human inputs. These can be better understood by the table below. These inputs have to be processed by plowing the lands, sowing seeds, providing fertilizers, spraying pesticides, and then harvesting. The ultimate output is the crop. In specific farms that are also rearing livestock, the result would include wool, dairy, and poultry products.

 Types Of Farming

Depending upon the soil and other geographical conditions coupled with the availability of their inputs, as explained above, various types of farming are practiced in the world.

Subsistence Farming

As the name suggests, this farming is essential to meet the needs of the farmer himself. Whatever he sells, a little extra is left over. This type of farming involves household labor with low-level technology and is done on a small patch of land. This is further sub-classified as follows:

Intensive Subsistence Farming: The farmer cultivates a small patch of land with simple tools and human labor. Depending on the availability of a suitable climate and soil and rainfall, or other means of irrigation, he can grow more than one crop in a year. This type of farming is more common in thickly populated areas of Asia.

Primitive Subsistence Farming: In the thickly forested areas where rainfall is heavy, and ground vegetation regenerates quickly, people clear a plot of land by felling the trees and burning them. Ashes are then mixed with the soil, and crops like potato, yam, maize, etc., are grown. Once the ground loses its fertility, the land is abandoned, and cultivators move to new areas. This kind of farming is still practiced in some regions of the Amazon basin, tropical Africa, and North-East India.