- "While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago."
It is a subsistence type of farming where farmers rely on traditional practices and techniques without utilizing modern technology.
Crop Rotation: A system of planting different crops in a particular sequence in one field to preserve soil fertility, prevent the spread of plant diseases and pests, and increase crop productivity.
Composting: The process of natural decomposition of organic material to form a nutrient-rich humus, which can be used as a natural fertilizer.
Seed saving: Collecting seeds of crops grown from open-pollinated, non-hybrid plants for use in the next planting season, ensuring preservation of genetic diversity and adaptation to local environmental conditions.
Weed management: Controlling weeds in crop fields through physical, cultural, and biological methods such as hoeing, mulching, crop rotation, planting cover crops, and biological control.
Livestock integration: The integration of animal husbandry into farming systems for soil improvement, pest control, and food production, such as having chickens roam in a vegetable garden to eat insects and provide manure.
Agroforestry: The practice of integrating trees with crops and/or livestock for multiple benefits, including soil fertility improvement, erosion control, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation.
Water management: Managing water availability and quality for crops and livestock through various techniques such as conservation tillage, rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, and using plant species that are adapted to drought or wet conditions.
Traditional land-use practices: The use of traditional ecological knowledge and practices for land management, such as swidden agriculture, shifting cultivation, and rotational grazing, which are adapted to local environmental conditions and promote sustainability and biodiversity.
Local food systems: The production, distribution, and consumption of food within a local community or region, often involving small-scale farmers, local markets or food co-ops, and emphasizing freshness, seasonality, and sustainability.
- "Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago."
- "The largest one percent of farms in the world are greater than 50 hectares and operate more than 70 percent of the world's farmland."
- "Nearly 40 percent of agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares."
- "Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares."
- "Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares and take up only around 12 percent of all agricultural land."
- "The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber)."
- "Global agricultural production amounts to approximately 11 billion tonnes of food..."
- "Global agricultural production amounts to... 32 million tonnes of natural fibers..."
- "Global agricultural production amounts to... 4 billion m3 of wood."
- "However, around 14 percent of the world's food is lost from production before reaching the retail level."
- "Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields..."
- "Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage."
- "Environmental issues include contributions to climate change, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution."
- "Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and climate change..."
- "Genetically modified organisms are widely used..."
- "Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some countries ban them." (Note: For the remaining three questions, the paragraph does not provide direct quotes to answer them. Instead, logical deductions are made based on the information provided.)
- Aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry are encompassed by agriculture.
- The development of farming and domestication of species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities.
- Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output in the twentieth century.