User:Farming

Farming

In very early times there were no farmers. The first men hunted wild animals, and they gathered wild plants, berries, nuts, fruits, roots and seeds. In a few parts of the world people still live like this. But in most places mankind has depended on farming to supply food for thousands of years. Today more people work on farms than at any other job.

Subsistence Farming

In some countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, almost everyone is a farmer. Often there is no other work. In regions where the land is not other work. In regions where the land is not very fertile, or where the land is not very fertile, or where there are few tools and machines to help, each family or group producers just enough food for itself. This is called subsistence farming. Many subsistence farmers have to move from place to place every few years. They clear a patch of land and farm it. After several growing seasons the soil loses its goodness, and becomes infertile. So the people must move on and find a fresh patch.

The World’s Farms

Over the world as a whole more than half the people are farmers, but they are not equally shared among countries. In Britain only two people out of every hundred are farmers. In North America the proportion is six in every hundred, in Australia nine, and Germany seven. These countries and many others like them are modern industrial nations. Most of their citizens work in offices and factories. In these countries farms are run like factories. Farmers have modern machines to help do the work more efficiently and quickly. They use more fertilizers to help the crops grow well, and they have all sorts of chemicals to prevent disease and kill harmful insects. Farmers in many parts of Africa and India work with simple tools, exactly like the ones their ancestors used hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago. And they grow ‘old fashioned’ crops and breed the same kinds of animals. The two main types of farming are arable farming, or crop growing, and livestock farming. Around one tenth of the land in the world is used for crop growing, while grazing or pasture land for livestock covers roughly twice that area. So three tenths. or a little over a quarter. of the Earth is farmland.

Arable Farming

Where the land is good enough, farmers usually grow crops rather than raise animals. This is partly because animals can graze on land which is too poor for arable farming, and partly because arable farms provide greater food value than livestock raising. The crops growing on a patch of land can feed about five times as many people as the meat from animals grazing on the same sized patch. The most important arable crops are cereals. These include wheat, rye, barley, maize, oats, millet and rice. Millions of people around the world live mainly on bread, which is usually made from wheat or rye, while in eastern countries such as China and India rice is the main food. The other main groups of arable crops are fruit and vegetables. In addition there are arable crops like tea, coffe and cocoa from which drinks are made, and others such as cotton, flax, hemp and rubber, which provide us with much of our clothing and other useful materials.

Livestock Farming

Livestock farming gives us meat and eggs, as well as milk and milk products such as butter and cheese. But it also provides materials like leather and wool. In some parts of the world it provides a vital form of transport and power in the form of draught animals. The most important animals raised on livestock farms around the world are cattle, sheep and pigs, and various kinds of poultry like chickens and ducks. Many farms combine arable and livestock farming, and is especially common in northern Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand. Source: Explorer Encyclopedia

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