History of agriculture

Agriculture involving domestication of plants was developed around 11,500 years ago separately in both
the Fertile crescent and at Chogha Golan in modern day Iran, where wild barley, wheat and lentils were
cultivated and with domesticated forms of wheat appeared about 9,800 years ago.[1] Agriculture has
undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. TheFertile Crescent of Western
Asia, Egypt and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously
been gathered in the wild. Independent development of agriculture occurred in northern and southern China,
Africa'sSahel, New Guinea, parts of India and several regions of the Americas.[2] Agricultural techniques such
as irrigation, crop rotation, the application of fertilizers were developed soon after the Neolithic
Revolution but have made significant strides in the past 200 years. The Haber-Bosch method for
synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to overcome
previous constraints.
In the past century, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has
been characterized by enhanced productivity, the replacement of human labor by synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides, selective breeding, and mechanization. The recent history of agriculture has been closely tied
with a range of political issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified
organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies.

3. FROM EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION IN AGRICULTURE

3.1. General
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, agricultural growth in the region was slow compared to the rates
achieved in the past thirty years. Agricultural development in the recent past has been characterized by an
extraordinary diversity both within and between countries. Many largely traditional farming systems that
were sustainable with a low density of population are becoming increasingly strained by, and vulnerable to,
the pressure of rising population. Spectacular environmental damage exemplifies the consequences of this
pressure as land-hungry cultivators push into the tropical forests and up the hillsides. A growing prosperity
among some groups contrasts with the deepening poverty among others less fortunate.
3.2. Agriculture typology
According to the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) there are three
basic types of agriculture. These are:

industrial agriculture;

Green Revolution agriculture;

resource poor agriculture.

Industrial agriculture has large farming units, is highly capitalized and relies on large inputs and subsidies. It
is found mainly in the developed world or in specialized enclaves in the developing countries. Green
Revolution agriculture is found in well-endowed areas of the developing world and in areas either irrigated or
with reliable rainfall. It includes large and small farms and uses high-yielding varieties with complementary
inputs. The third type of agriculture is associated with unfavourable or difficult areas that are mainly rainfed,
often undulating and with fragile or problem soils.
Agriculture in Asia also falls in the above three categories. Industrial agriculture that was alien to the region
emerged in the context of the political colonization by the European powers. Until World War II it was largely
manifested in the region in the form of large plantations, particularly in the relatively land-rich areas of
equatorial South-east Asia.
The traditional subsistence rice cultivation in the riverine lowlands of Asia could be considered to be a
primitive form of Green Revolution agriculture. These systems are associated with irrigation, sometimes with
local water lifting, and constitute the productive base for the indigenous civilizations, large and small. Not all
the lowlands are irrigated, with the important exceptions of China and India.
Traditionally the third category of agriculture in Asia is practised by groups that reside in the hills and on the
fringes of the deserts, at the edges of the main lowland civilizations. In South-east Asia these groups are
mainly ethnic minorities; in the Indian sub-continent they are known as tribes. Some of these groups may
have been the original inhabitants of the lowland areas, and may have been driven into the forested highland
by more dominant civilizations. The type of cultivation associated with these areas is either rainfed or
swidden cultivation (see also section 2.2) that involves the clearing of new forest plots every one to two
years when the natural fertility on the old plots, derived from the burning of the forest, is exhausted.
3.3. Changes in traditional patterns
During the rapid population growth and economic development that have occurred in the region there have
been considerable changes in these three basic types of agriculture. The functional separation of the
industrial agriculture, which existed as enclaves at the beginning of the colonial period, has disappeared,
and the spatial separation between the second and third categories of agriculture also has been eroded by
the expansion of cultivation frontier into the forests.
3.3.1. Changes in industrial or plantation agriculture
Over the years, industrial or plantation agriculture in the region has become diverse. The assertion of
economic nationalism, following independence, has brought about the break-up of many large estates into
smallholdings. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the idea of the state plantation has emerged, not only through the
take-over of former colonial estates but also through the establishment of smallholder settlement schemes,
in which the landholders are closely tied to central processing facilities operated by government agencies.
In Thailand and the Philippines, industrial agriculture has taken the form of operations by private agribusiness enterprises. These have rarely been able to secure large enough areas of land to operate at the
scale required by their processing facilities, encouraging them to arrange production contracts with
individual small farmers in the hinterland of their factories, in the style of the sugar quotas of the past. The
range of crops that are grown under contract farming schemes has broadened to include several which do
not need immediate processing, such as cotton, wheat, barley and cashew nuts (ESCAP 1994).
Today, plantation crops are the mainstay of several economies in the region, contributing substantially to
their foreign exchange earnings and providing employment for a significant proportion of their population.
Continued viability of these crops has been recognized as being important for sustaining the economies of
these countries. However, for most countries, the existing plantings, notably of coconuts and tea, are
characterized by low productivity, a consequence of the large age of the stands, their inferior varieties, the
non-optimal plant density, minimal input use and poor agronomic practices. Optimization is being achieved
through rehabilitation and replanting of the crop concerned, and through inter-cropping with other crops; it
depends on available technological innovations, the crops responsiveness to improved practices and the
extent to which the increased output will lead towards substantial income gains.

Land use considerations have played an important role in decisions to expand the cultivation of plantation
crops. Many countries have areas with severe terrain constraints (steep slopes) and high rainfall, which will
suffer extensive ecological damage if planted to annual crops. Consequently, plantation crops such as
rubber, tea, coffee, cocoa, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom, which require minimal cultivation and provide
continuous ground cover, have been successfully established in such areas. Expansion of certain crops has
been based on their ability to overcome specific environmental constraints, e.g. cashews, mangoes and
cinnamon in dry and sandy areas, cardamom at high altitudes, and pineapple and coffee in organic soils
(peat).
3.3.2. Changes in Green Revolution agriculture
Three decades ago, the collective response to the spectre of hunger resulted in what became known as the
Green Revolution. In Green Revolution agriculture, the major change has been the improvement of irrigation
systems, with upstream storages allowing the extension of cultivation into the dry season. This has enabled
intensification and specialization, typified by the introduction in the 1960s of improved high-yielding varieties
that require large inputs of chemical fertilizer. At their most intensive, such systems have been producing
two or three crops per year, often incorporating a short duration legume between cereals. Because of the
excellent resource base of the Green Revolution agriculture, smallholders who have expanded their
enterprises have achieved a size of operation difficult to distinguish from industrial agriculture.
The resulting expansion of food production has brought Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, the Peoples
Republic of China, the Philippines and others from the brink of starvation to the threshold of national foodgrain self-sufficiency. It has stimulated industrial growth and fostered political stability. And, unlike many
previous rural development efforts, the majority of the beneficiaries of the Green Revolution have been
small-scale producers.
The Green Revolution has been based on a package of technological inputs - fertilizers, pesticides and
irrigation - that have allowed the full expression of the yield potential of new crop varieties. The Green
Revolution has indeed transformed the agriculture scene and provided the impetus for agricultural
development in the region.
That the Green Revolution has resulted in productivity gains in Asia is obvious from the fact that between
1965 and 1990 cereal production increased by an average of more than 3 percent annually in many of the
high-population countries. In some it was 4 percent or more (e.g. Pakistan and Indonesia), whereas some
traditional agricultural systems had been able to sustain only 0.5-1.0 percent increases in production in the
past.
For the most part, the high growth rates did not bring new land into production. With only a few exceptions,
growth in area under agricultural production was less than 1 percent annually in most countries of the
region. In fact land area under agricultural production actually declined in a few countries, such as Peoples
Republic of China and Japan. This implies that the productivity gains came from increases in yields per
hectare, which is what the Green Revolution was all about. Peoples Republic of China and Indonesia had
yield increases averaging nearly 4 percent annually from the mid-1960s to 1990, and annual increases
greater than 2.5 percent were achieved in several other countries including India, Republic of Korea,
Pakistan and the Philippines (Doobs 1994).
As stated above, increased land under irrigation was part of the Green Revolution story. Several large
countries (India, Indonesia, and the Philippines) increased their areas under irrigation by more than 2 percent
per year. In addition, the effectiveness of irrigation was substantially enhanced on many already irrigated
tracts when tube wells were installed to augment or replace irrigation supplies from traditional dug wells,
tanks and reservoir fed canals. The real yield payoff, however, came from the combination of irrigation water,
improved cereal cultivars, and fertilizer. Many countries in Asia experienced average annual growth rates in
fertilizer use in excess of 10 percent in the last three decades. Increasing fertilizer use, often by subsidizing
farm-level prices, was a major part of the agricultural development strategy in many of developing countries
of Asia during the 1970s.

Productivity gains associated with the Green Revolution in Asia have been greatest in wheat and rice areas
with well developed irrigation systems; productivity gains in the un-irrigated arid and semi-arid areas of Asia
have been limited.
3.3.3. Changes in third world agriculture
It is probably in the third world agriculture that changes in the traditional systems have been most dramatic,
both in the expansion of the area cultivated and in the diversification of cultivation systems. While the Green
Revolution agriculture responded through intensification to demands created by increased population
growth and rising consumption standards, increases in production have proved inadequate. Consequently,
there has been movement of surplus population from such areas onto more marginal lands (ESCAP 1994).
Third world agriculture refers to subsistence farming that includes swidden cultivation and rainfed farming.
Rainfed areas constitute over 70 percent of the cultivated land in the region and support nearly two-thirds of
its farmers. Yield increases still depend on the subtle interaction between soil, water, seeds, and sunlight,
but the process is not as well understood in rainfed conditions as it is for irrigated land. Local conditions
vary so much that to find solutions is often costly, and they can seldom be replicated elsewhere. Even with
the current state of knowledge, however, there is scope for growth. New methods of tilling, new crop
rotations, increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides, soil conservation and drainage all have a part to play.
Soil erosion and declining fertility are the main threats to rainfed agriculture in the humid and sub-humid
areas.
The tackling of these challenges has required protection of the soil by continuous crop coverage and
minimum tillage, as well as by drilling seeds and controlling weeds. This has been considered to provide a
systematic approach that is being promoted in most countries. Increases in yields from rainfed land will
therefore be relatively slow, and concentrated in regions with better rainfall and soil, but the gains could be
considerable. If rainfed land could increase its yield by 500 kg/ha, the total increase in production would
exceed what could be achieved by a rise of 2 t/ha in the yield of all irrigated land.
Some formidable obstacles, such as flooding, stand in the way of such achievements: in many parts of Asia,
normal rains cause widespread floods. Standing water often more than 30 cm deep makes many paddy fields
of Asia unsuitable for high-yielding dwarf varieties of rice. Small-scale flood protection and effective
drainage have enabled modern rice technology to expand into parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar, India and
Thailand.
3.4. Per capita food production
The region annually produced 50 percent of the worlds total food crops, comprising cereals, roots and
tubers, oil-crops and pulses, and almost 50 percent of the cereals (911 Mt) during the period ending 1995.
Further, it produced as much as 91 percent (502 Mt) of the worlds rice paddy in 1995. The overall food
production indices in 1997 were 137 for Asia and the Pacific Region, and 117 for the world. The irrigated area
in the region accounts for 60 percent of the worlds total irrigated area.
Food production in the region climbed steadily after 1960-1970. The annual rate of growth for the decade
ending 1990 was 3.5 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for the world, being second only to the Latin American
region, which recorded an annual growth rate of 3.9 percent.
Performance of the countries varied considerably. All of them, except Mongolia and Japan, produced more
food in 1996/97 than in 1989/1990. The increases ranged from 2 percent to 50 percent. Table 2 contains data
on changes in per capita food production in the region during the period 1988-1990 relative to 1979-1980. As
the table shows, two-thirds of the Asian countries had increases in per capita food production during that
period (indices greater than 100). All the countries with populations of more than 50 million people had
increases, except for Bangladesh and Philippines. Peoples Republic of China, and India, with a combined
population of nearly 2 billion persons, both achieved gains.
This record of success in the recent past could be a reason for modest optimism about future food supplies
in relation to population. However, there are also areas for major concern. The regions farmers have already

adopted the Green Revolution packages of inputs in the agro-climatic areas to which they are well suited.
Thus productivity gains in the years to come are likely to be much harder to achieve than the gains since the
mid-1960s. Moreover, it has been estimated that food demands over the next 15 years will require substantial
increases in agricultural production. Peoples Republic of China and India, in particular, face immense
challenges, with only 0.08 and 0.02 ha of cropland per capita, respectively. Several other large Asian
countries also have quite low per capita availability of cropland, including Indonesia (0.12 ha), the
Philippines (0.13 ha), Bangladesh (0.08 ha), Pakistan (0.17 ha), and Japan (0.04 ha). The world average is 0.28
ha and in the USA it is 0.76 ha (World Resources Institute 1992). With growing populations, cropland per
capita will fall even further in these large Asian countries (Doobs 1994).
In addition to continued growth in population, rising income levels in much of Asia will increase the demand
for food. These growing food demands associated with rising population and income in the years ahead will
present major challenges to the achievement of the requisite yield increase in Asia.
Table 2. Per capita food production for selected Asian countries*
British[edit]
The Englishmen James Fison, Edward Packard, Thomas Hadfield and the Prentice brothers each founded
companies in the early 19th century to create fertilizers from bone meal[citation needed].
The developing sciences of chemistry and Paleontology, combined with the discovery of coprolites in
commercial quantities in East Anglia, led Fisons and Packard to develop sulfuric acid and fertilizer plants
at Bramford, and Snape, Suffolk in the 1850s to create superphosphates, which were shipped around the
world from the port atIpswich[citation needed]. By 1871 there were about 80 factories making superphosphate [where?].
[16]

After World War I these businesses came under competitive pressure from naturally produced guano,
primarily found on the Pacific islands, as their extraction and distribution had become economically
attractive[citation needed].
The interwar period[17] saw innovative competition from Imperial Chemical Industries who developed
syntheticammonium sulfate in 1923, Nitro-chalk in 1927, and a more concentrated and economical fertilizer
called CCF based on ammonium phosphate in 1931. Competition was limited as ICI ensured it controlled
most of the world's ammonium sulfate supplies.
North America and other European Countries[edit]

Founded in 1812, Mirat, producer ofmanures and fertilizers, is claimed to be the oldest industrial business
inSalamanca (Spain).
Other European and North American fertilizer companies developed their market share, forcing the English
pioneer companies to merge, becoming Fisons, Packard, and Prentice Ltd. in 1929 [citation needed]. Together they
produced 85,000 tons of superphosphate/year in 1934 from their new factory and deep-water docks
in Ipswich. By World War II they had acquired about 40 companies, including Hadfields in 1935 [citation needed], and
two years later the large Anglo-Continental Guano Works, founded in 1917[citation needed].

Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired
characteristics.[1] Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from
simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to more complex molecular
techniques (see cultigen and cultivar).
Plant breeding has been practiced for thousands of years, since near the beginning of human civilization. It
is practiced worldwide by individuals such as gardeners and farmers, or by professional plant breeders
employed by organizations such as governmentinstitutions, universities, crop-specific industry associations
or research centers.
International development agencies believe that breeding new crops is important for ensuring food
security by developing new varieties that are higher-yielding, resistant to pests and diseases, droughtresistant or regionally adapted to different environments and growing conditions.

The post-war environment was characterized by much higher production levels as a result of the "Green
Revolution" and new types of seed with increased nitrogen-absorbing potential, notably the high-response
varieties of maize, wheat, and rice. This has accompanied the development of strong national competition,
accusations of cartels and supply monopolies, and ultimately another wave of mergers and acquisitions. The
original names no longer exist other than as holding companies or brand names: Fisons and ICI
agrochemicals are part of today's Yara International[18] and AstraZeneca companies.
Major players in this market now include the Russian fertilizer company Uralkali (listed on the London Stock
Exchange), whose former majority owner is Dmitry Rybolovlev, ranked by Forbes as 60th in the list of
wealthiest people in 2008.

Plant breeding started with sedentary agriculture and particularly the domestication of the
first agricultural plants, a practice which is estimated to date back 9,000 to 11,000 years.[2] Initially early
farmers simply selected food plants with particular desirable characteristics, and employed these as
progenitors for subsequent generations, resulting in an accumulation of valuable traits over time.
Gregor Mendel's experiments with plant hybridization led to his establishing laws of inheritance. Once this
work became well known, it formed the basis of the new science ofgenetics, which stimulated research by
many plant scientists dedicated to improving crop production through plant breeding.

Modern plant breeding is applied genetics, but its scientific basis is broader, covering molecular
biology, cytology, systematics, physiology, pathology, entomology, chemistry, andstatistics (biometrics). It
has also developed its own technology.

McCormick land wheel driven self binder

Tractors
Farm tractors first appeared in a crude form in the latter years of the nineteenth century.
They started to make a real impact on British farming during the First World War when
American examples were imported to help with the drive to increase food production.
These early types were comparatively inefficient, unreliable and expensive for many
farmers to have confidence in.

Cultivation, 1930's style

By the 1930s, however, when the picture above was taken, design improvements together
with cheaper manufacturing methods were leading to changes and the tractor became a
progressively more familiar sight in the landscape. In the middle of that decade, the first
production tractors incorporating Harry Ferguson's hydraulic system for attaching
implements appeared and introduced a new generation of tractor design which has
continued on through to the present.

The old and new

Tractors are the multi-functioning workhorse of the modern day farm. They are used in
field and yard operations, carrying, powering and utilizing a wide variety of tools and
equipment. A farmer can expect to achieve up to 8000 hrs relatively trouble free operation
from a modern farm tractor. Improvements over the previous two decades include:

Turbo chargers with or without intercoolers

Increase in use of four wheel drive tractors

Improved operator comfort

More sophisticated transmission systems

Front and rear mounted tools

Sophisticated hydraulic systems

Improved chassis strength and weight distribution

Improved tyre technology

Fast and high clearance tractors