Is agriculture in India evolving or devolving?
Answers
Considering that the alarming excess and continuing growth of the current world population (of humans) is directly tied to food production and availability, the question of how and why we even developed the technology of agriculture in the first place is becoming more and more relevant to human survival as we collectively continue to destroy the environment in which we live due in part to these very agricultural techniques and strategies that we are continuing to employ today. Current estimations show that at around the same time that agriculture was beginning to develop and thrive, the population of our ancestors started to double at a rate that was far higher than what it had been previously for the more than 2 million years of prior human existence. What does this then mean, and what does it say about humans and their attitude towards the environment? This hinges largely on the viewpoints to which we allow ourselves to be open.
The most common view taken is that most (if not all) technologies we create mark an "advance" for humankind. Perhaps because they are prized so much either for their practical or symbolic value, it has become difficult to regard the technologies without a bias towards their immediate effects on human society as opposed to the overall compatibility with the rest of the natural world. Within this mindset, it is very hard to put aside the very "advanced" tools that seem to form the foundation of what a complicated, sophisticated, intelligent human is supposed to be. In this light, a complex process like agriculture cannot be anything but an advance, and any lifestyle that dates prior to the agricultural advent must, by subtle implication, be inferior. This infe...
technologies we created, from market economy and weapons of mass destruction to the simpler-scale household appliances. This suggests that many do not really see the frictions such technologies impose on our surroundings as problems, but rather according to their perception of the way things are, the tools they use are only doing exactly what they were supposed to and it cannot be helped. And moreover, this is so ingrained in most modern human cultures that the constituents of said cultures do not even see a problem with that.
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Answer:
The practice of agriculture is also known as "farming", while scientists, inventors and others devoted to improving farming methods and implements are also said to be engaged in agriculture.
Subsistence farming, who farms a small area with limited resource inputs, and produces only enough food to meet the needs of his/her family.
At the other end is commercial intensive agriculture, including industrial agriculture.
Such farming involves large fields and/or numbers of animals, large resource inputs (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), and a high level of mechanization.
These operations generally attempt to maximize financial income from grain, produce, or livestock.
Modern agriculture extends well beyond the traditional production of food for humans and animal feeds.
Other agricultural production goods include timber, fertilizers, animal hides, leather, industrial chemicals (starch, sugar, alcohols and resins), fibers (cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax), fuels (methane from biomass, ethanol, biodiesel), cut flowers, ornamental and nursery plants, tropical fish and birds for the pet trade, and both legal and illegal drugs (biopharmaceuticals, tobacco, marijuana, opium, cocaine).
The 20th Century saw massive changes in agricultural practice, particularly in agricultural chemistry.
Agricultural chemistry includes the application of chemical fertilizer, chemical insecticides, and chemical fungicides, soil makeup, analysis of agricultural products, and nutritional needs of farm animals.
Beginning in the Western world, the green revolution spread many of these changes to farms throughout the world, with varying success.
Other recent changes in agriculture include hydroponics, plant breeding, hybridization, gene manipulation, better management of soil nutrients, and improved weed control.
Genetic engineering has yielded crops which have capabilities beyond those of naturally occuring plants, such as higher yields and disease resistance.
Modified seeds germinate faster, and thus can be grown in an extended growing area.
Genetic engineering of plants has proven controversial, particularly in the case of herbicide-resistant plants.
As of 2006, an estimated 36 percent of the world's workers are employed in agriculture (down from 42% in 1996), making it by far the most common occupation.
However, the relative significance of farming has dropped steadily since the beginning of industrialization, and in 2006 – for the first time in history – the services sector overtook agriculture as the economic sector employing the most people worldwide.
Also, agricultural production accounts for less than five percent of the gross world product (an aggregate of all gross domestic products).