Agricultural Economics Pdf Books

Academic Press. Academic Press has been a leading publisher of scientific books for over 70 years. Best known throughout the international scientific community for. Youre currently viewing our resources for Economics. For additional assistance, you should refer to the discussion forum for this course. Agricultural Economics Science. Direct. com. Latest published articles. ISSN 0. 16. 9 5. Copyright 2. Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved. Agriculture Wikipedia. Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentaryhuman civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Download Agricultural Economics Lecture Notes PDF Download free online book chm pdf. Industrial agriculture based on large scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural method. Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have in many cases sharply increased yields from cultivation, but at the same time have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare, enviromental damage such as massive drainage of resources such as water and feed fed to the animals, global warming, rainforest destruction, leftover waste products that are littered, and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, artificial additives and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production. Genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts. Significant degradation of land and water resources, including the depletion of aquifers, has been observed in recent decades, and the effects of global warming on agriculture and of agriculture on global warming are still not fully understood. However, entomophagy would solve most of the former problems, and may start to gain popularity among society in the West. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats and spices. Fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo. Other useful materials are also produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, biofuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. Over one third of the worlds workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the service sector, although the percentages of agricultural workers in developed countries has decreased significantly over the past several centuries. Etymology and terminologyeditThe word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultra, from ager, field, and cultra, cultivation or growing. Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use natural resources to produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services. This definition includes arable farming or agronomy, and horticulture, all terms for the growing of plants, animal husbandry and forestry. A distinction is sometimes made between forestry and agriculture, based on the formers longer management rotations, extensive versus intensive management practices and development mainly by nature, rather than by man. Even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture the management of forests and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry. HistoryeditAgriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 1. 1 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 1. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 1. Rice was domesticated in China between 1. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 1. From around 1. 1,5. Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan some 1. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 1. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,0. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,0. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,6. Eurasia at an unknown time. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 6,0. In the Middle Ages, both in the Islamic world and in Europe, agriculture was transformed with improved techniques and the diffusion of crop plants, including the introduction of sugar, rice, cotton and fruit trees such as the orange to Europe by way of Al Andalus. After 1. 49. 2, the Columbian exchange brought New World crops such as maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes and manioc to Europe, and Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice and turnips, and livestock including horses, cattle, sheep and goats to the Americas. Irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 2. British Agricultural Revolution. Since 1. 90. 0, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as human labor has been replaced by mechanization, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding. The Haber Bosch method allowed the synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing crop yields. Epson Perfection Scanner Software there. Modern agriculture has raised political issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies, leading to alternative approaches such as the organic movement2. Agriculture and civilizationeditCivilization was the product of the Agricultural Neolithic Revolution as H. Canon 550Ex User Manual Pdf. G. Wells put it, civilization was the agricultural surplus. In the course of history, civilization coincided in space with fertile areas such as The Fertile Crescent, and states formed mainly in circumscribed agricultural lands. The Great Wall of China and the Roman empires limes borders demarcated the same northern frontier of cereal agriculture. This cereal belt fed the civilizations formed in the Axial Age and connected by the Silk Road. Ancient Egyptians, whose agriculture depended exclusively on the Nile, deified the river, worshiped, and exalted it in a great hymn. However, the way in which the Nile began to be deified by the people in Egypt was because it played such a crucial role in the formation of civilization within this area. This began because early settlers flocked towards the river bank of the Nile around 6. BCE which in turn slowly progressed into Egypt becoming the first recognizable nation state around 3. BCE. Furthermore, it was able to flourish as a nation state due to the many benefits and resources the Nile provided.