What is Agriculture?

  • (noun): The practice of cultivating the land or raising stock.
    Synonyms: farming, husbandry
    See also — Additional definitions below

Agriculture

Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. Agriculture generally speaking refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant and termite. The word agriculture is the English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, "a field", and cultūra, "cultivation" in the strict sense of "tillage of the soil". Thus, a literal reading of the word yields "tillage of fields".

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Some articles on Agriculture:

Agriculture - Policy
... At the policy level, common goals of agriculture include Conservation Economic stability Environmental sustainability Food quality Ensuring that the food supply is of a consistent and ...
Yoshiro Okamoto
... Upon graduate, he joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which is now part of Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries ... In June 1997 he also received a Ph.D in agriculture while still in the ministry ...
Kansas Department Of Agriculture
... The Kansas Department of Agriculture is a department of the government of Kansas under the Governor of Kansas ... The head of the Department is the Secretary of Agriculture, who is appointed by the Governor, with the approval of the Kansas Senate ... The current Secretary of Agriculture is Dale Rodman, who was appointed by Governor Sam Brownback in 2011 ...

More definitions of "Agriculture":

  • (noun): The class of people engaged in growing food.
  • (noun): The federal department that administers programs that provide services to farmers (including research and soil conservation and efforts to stabilize the farming economy); created in 1862.
    Synonyms: Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Department, USDA

Famous quotes containing the word agriculture:

    But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)