History of Agriculture

The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of tax. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.

Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. However, domestication did not occur until much later. The earliest evidence of agricultural cultivation is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. 

By around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas, and flax – were cultivated in the Levant.Rye may have been cultivated earlier, but this claim remains controversial.

Rice was domesticated in China by 6200 BC with earliest known cultivation from 5700 BC, followed by mung, soy and adzuki beans.

Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 11,000 years ago, followed by sheep.

Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and India around 8500 BC.

Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 3000 BC.

Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3000 BC.

In South America, agriculture began as early as 9000 BCE, starting with the cultivation of several species of plants that later became only minor crops. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8000 BC and 5000 BC along  with beans, tomatoes, peanuts, coca, and  llama.

Cassava was domesticated in the Amazon Basin no later than 7000 BC. Maize (Zea mays) found its way to South America from Mesoamerica, where wild teosinte was domesticated about 7000 BC and genetically manipulated to become domestic maize. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 4200 BC; another species of cotton was domesticated in Mesoamerica and became by far the most important species of cotton in the textile industry in modern times.

Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7000 BC. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the same period in Papua New Guinea. In Australia, agriculture was invented at a currently unspecified period, with the oldest eel traps of Budj Bim dating to 6,600 BC and the deployment of several crops ranging from yams to bananas.

Irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 200 years, starting with the British Agricultural Revolution.

Since 1900, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as human labour has been replaced by mechanization, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding.

The Haber-Bosch process allowed the synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing crop yields. Modern agriculture has raised social, political, and environmental issues including overpopulation, water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies. In response, organic farming developed in the twentieth century as an alternative to the use of synthetic pesticides.

For agricultural purposes, the Chinese had innovated the hydraulic-powered trip hammer by the 1st century BC.Although it found other purposes, its main function to pound, decorticate, and polish grain that otherwise would have been done manually. The Chinese also began using the square-pallet chain pump by the 1st century AD, powered by a waterwheel or oxen pulling an on a system of mechanical wheels. Although the chain pump found use in public works of providing water for urban and palatial pipe systems, it was used largely to lift water from a lower to higher elevation in filling irrigation canals and channels for farmland. By the end of the Han dynasty in the late 2nd century, heavy ploughs had been developed with iron ploughshares and mouldboards. These slowly spread west, revolutionizing farming in Northern Europe by the 10th century. 

Asian rice was domesticated 8,200–13,500 years ago in China, with a single genetic origin from the wild rice Oryza rufipogon,in the Pearl River valley region of China. Rice cultivation then spread to South and Southeast Asia.

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Definition of Agriculture

Agriculture is the science, art, or practice of cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock and in varying degrees the preparation and marketing of the resulting products.

Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock.  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.

It is also the  science, art, or occupation concerned with cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock.