Crossword clues for agriculture
agriculture
- A large-scale farming enterprise
- The practice of cultivating the land or raising stock
- 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
- The class of people engaged in growing food
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Agriculture \Ag"ri*cul`ture\ (?; 135), n. [L. agricultura; ager field + cultura cultivation: cf. F. agriculture. See Acre and Culture.] The art or science of cultivating the ground, including the harvesting of crops, and the rearing and management of live stock; tillage; husbandry; farming.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. The art or science of cultivate the ground, including the harvesting of crops, and the rearing and management of livestock; tillage; husbandry; farming.
WordNet
n. a large-scale farming enterprise [syn: agribusiness, factory farm]
the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock [syn: farming, husbandry]
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 [syn: Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Department, USDA]
the class of people engaged in growing food
Wikipedia
Agriculture is the cultivation 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 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. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology.
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 and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, 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.
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 world's 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.
Agriculture is an important theme in Chinese mythology. There are many myths about the invention of agriculture that have been told or written about in China (Yang 2005:70). Chinese mythology refers to those myths found in the historical geographic area of China. This includes myths in Chinese and other languages, as transmitted by Han Chinese as well as other ethnic groups (of which fifty-six are officially recognized by current administration of China). (Yang 2005:4) Many of the myths about agriculture involve its invention by such deities or culture heroes such as Shennong, Houji, Hou Tu, and Shujun: of these Shennong is the most famous, according to Lihui Yang (2005:70). There are also many other myths. Myths related to agriculture include how humans learned the use of fire, cooking, animal husbandry and the use of draft animals, inventions of various agricultural tools and implements, the domestication of various species of plants such as ginger and radishes, the evaluation and uses of various types of soil, irrigation by digging wells, and the invention of farmers markets. Other myths include events which made agriculture possible by destroying an excessive number of suns in the sky or ending the Great Flood.
Usage examples of "agriculture".
But the third great transformation, and the most important, after agriculture, Goudsblom said, was industrialisation, the union of fire with water, to produce in the first instance steam, harnessing a new form of energy which enabled machines of unprecedented size and power to perform certain routine skills much better and much faster than was possible by hand.
Old World, then, the location and timing of agriculture is understood, as are the plants and animals on which it was based.
Pleistocene Age, when the world warmed up and people became much more mobile, and that the cultivation of wild species, before agriculture proper, encouraged the birth of more children.
Until that point, agriculture had flourished between the Tigris and the Euphrates for thousands of years.
But Europe by the thirteenth century, say, boasted great cities, thriving agriculture and trade, sophisticated government and legal systems.
Trade was hampered by widespread piracy, agriculture was so inefficient that the population was never fed adequately, the name exchequer emerged to describe the royal treasury because the officials were so deficient in arithmetic they were forced to use a chequered cloth as a kind of abacus when making calculations.
North and Thomas note that a new system of agriculture was introduced in these years in Europe, namely the change from the two-field system to the three-field system.
The rival view was that true riches lay in trade, agriculture and industry, where wealth was truly earned and productively used.
Britain involved in agriculture, there were well over a million in trade and manufacturing and this number was increasing dramatically.
Politics, law, agriculture, commerce, mathematical and physical sciences, and the arts, were all included.
Let the boy who wants to be a farmer carry with him the memory of successful Negro farmers and of a Negro who knew enough about scientific agriculture to teach him to compete with the best white farmers in the country.
But in the South, where Negro labor is plenty and agriculture is the chief occupation, the Negro will always have a practical monopoly, and his opportunities in all the trades in the North, as well as in the South, will increase in proportion as he becomes an educated, thrifty, law-abiding land-owner.
He does four-fifths of the agricultural labor of the South and thereby adds four-fifths to the wealth of the South derived from agriculture, the leading Southern industry.
Professional, Agriculture, trade and transportation, manufactures and personal service.
We must not forget that agriculture is what we might call the staple industry of the South.