A farm (also called an agricultural holding ) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms , vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber , biofuel , and other commodities . It includes ranches, feedlots , orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms , both of which can operate on land or at sea.
96-639: Manor Farm is the name traditionally given to the farm of a manor house in England. Its produce was used to supply the manor. Due to its ancient origins, there are many uses of the name Manor Farm : Manor Farm Country Park and its museum, in Botley, Hampshire Manor Farm, Pulham Market , Norfolk, a property owned by the Landmark Trust Manor Farm, Ruislip , London Manor Farm, Surrey ,
192-399: A hill farm , while large estates growing cash crops such as cotton or coffee may be called plantations. Many other terms are used to describe farms to denote their methods of production, as in collective , corporate , intensive , organic or vertical . Other farms may primarily exist for research or education, such as an ant farm , and since farming is synonymous with mass production,
288-795: A 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee , Northern Israel , provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The Ohalo site is at the junction of the Upper Paleolithic and the Early Epipaleolithic , and has been attributed to both periods. The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally. The studied tools were not used intensively, and they reflect two harvesting modes: flint knives held by hand and inserts hafted in
384-623: A corridor between the millet and rice cultivation centres where both rice and millet were cultivated. At around 5,500 to 4,000 BP, there was increasing migration into Taiwan from the early Austronesian Dapenkeng culture , bringing rice and millet cultivation technology with them. During this period, there is evidence of large settlements and intensive rice cultivation in Taiwan and the Penghu Islands , which may have resulted in overexploitation . Bellwood (2011) proposes that this may have been
480-602: A different problem: most of the wild seeds do not germinate in the first year; the first evidence of lentil domestication, breaking dormancy in their first year, appears in the early Neolithic at Jerf el Ahmar (in modern Syria), and lentils quickly spread south to the Netiv HaGdud site in the Jordan Valley . The process of domestication allowed the founder crops to adapt and eventually become larger, more easily harvested, more dependable in storage and more useful to
576-405: A food source, also had to be taken into account. Besides being a direct source of food, certain animals could provide leather, wool, hides, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included dogs ( East Asia , about 15,000 years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. West Asia was the source for many animals that could be domesticated, such as sheep, goats and pigs. This area was also
672-465: A great decrease in the number of agricultural workers needed. In Europe, traditional family farms are giving way to larger production units. In Australia, some farms are very large because the land is unable to support a high stocking density of livestock because of climatic conditions. In less developed countries, small farms are the norm, and the majority of rural residents are subsistence farmers , feeding their families and selling any surplus products in
768-418: A greater share of total farming input expenditures towards the purchase of locally sourced input?(e.g. labour and organic fertilisers) and a local multiplier effect is expected to kick in. Overall, green farming practices tend to require more labour inputs than conventional farming (e.g. from comparable levels to as much as 30 per cent more) (FAO 2007 and European Commission 2010), creating jobs in rural areas and
864-634: A handle. The finds shed new light on cereal harvesting techniques some 8,000 years before the Natufian and 12,000 years before the establishment of sedentary farming communities in the Near East. Furthermore, the new finds accord well with evidence for the earliest ever cereal cultivation at the site and the use of stone-made grinding implements. Agriculture appeared first in West Asia about 2,000 years later, around 10,000–9,000 years ago. The region
960-512: A higher return on labour inputs." Where most of the income is from some other employment, and the farm is really an expanded residence, the term hobby farm is common. This will allow sufficient size for recreational use but be very unlikely to produce sufficient income to be self-sustaining. Hobby farms are commonly around 2 hectares (4.9 acres) but may be much larger depending upon land prices (which vary regionally). Often very small farms used for intensive primary production are referred to by
1056-767: A highly advantageous geographical location that afforded them a head start in the Neolithic Revolution. Both shared the temperate climate ideal for the first agricultural settings, and both were near a number of easily domesticable plant and animal species. In areas where continents aligned north–south such as the Americas and Africa, crops—and later domesticated animals—could not spread across tropical zones. Agriculture in Neolithic China can be separated into two broad regions, Northern China and Southern China. The agricultural centre in northern China
SECTION 10
#17327800918151152-567: A holding of any size from a fraction of a hectare to several thousand hectares. A farm may operate under a monoculture system or with a variety of cereal or arable crops, which may be separate from or combined with raising livestock. Specialist farms are often denoted as such, thus a dairy farm, fish farm, poultry farm or mink farm. Some farms may not use the word at all, hence vineyard (grapes), orchard (nuts and other fruit), market garden or "truck farm" (vegetables and flowers). Some farms may be denoted by their topographical location, such as
1248-480: A key indicator of status and power, especially in Medieval European agrarian societies . The distribution of farm ownership has historically been closely linked to form of government. Medieval feudalism was essentially a system that centralized control of farmland, control of farm labor and political power, while the early American democracy, in which land ownership was a prerequisite for voting rights,
1344-529: A large farm becomes a station . A farm in Africa includes various structures. Depending on climate-related areas primarily farming is the raising and breeding of grazing livestock, such as cattle, sheep, ostriches, horses or goats. Predominantly domestic animals are raised for their meat, milk, skin, leather or fiber wool). You might even come across silk farms. Furthermore, there are plenty of hunting farms, guest farms and game farms . Arable] or irrigated land
1440-487: A narrow optimal climatic range outside of which they cannot grow for reasons of light or rain changes. For instance, wheat does not normally grow in tropical climates, just like tropical crops such as bananas do not grow in colder climates. Some authors, like Jared Diamond , have postulated that this east–west axis is the main reason why plant and animal domestication spread so quickly from the Fertile Crescent to
1536-501: A nature reserve owned by the Surrey Wildlife Trust Manor Farm, West Challow , Oxfordshire Literature Manor Farm is the setting of George Orwell's novel Animal Farm See also Home Farm (disambiguation) , a similar sort of farm established after the end of manorialism Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
1632-522: A region of the Near East known as the Fertile Crescent. According to the archaeological record this phenomenon, known as "Neolithic", rapidly expanded from these territories into Europe. However, whether this diffusion was accompanied or not by human migrations is greatly debated. Mitochondrial DNA – a type of maternally inherited DNA located in the cell cytoplasm – was recovered from the remains of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farmers in
1728-549: A relatively short period of between 20 and 200 years. Some of the pioneering attempts failed at first and crops were abandoned, sometimes to be taken up again and successfully domesticated thousands of years later: rye , tried and abandoned in Neolithic Anatolia , made its way to Europe as weed seeds and was successfully domesticated in Europe, thousands of years after the earliest agriculture. Wild lentils presented
1824-680: A system of subsidies and market intervention. Until the 1990s, the policy accounted for over 60 per cent of the European Union's annual budget, and as of 2013 accounts for around 34 per cent. According to the World Bank , "most empirical evidence indicates that land productivity on large farms in Pakistan is lower than that of small farms, holding other factors constant." Small farmers have "higher net returns per hectare" than large farms, according to farm household income data. Nepal
1920-446: A variety of other crops, dating back to 11,000 BP. Two potentially significant economic species, taro ( Colocasia esculenta ) and yam ( Dioscorea sp.), have been identified dating at least to 10,200 calibrated years before present (cal BP). Further evidence of bananas and sugarcane dates to 6,950 to 6,440 BCE. This was at the altitudinal limits of these crops, and it has been suggested that cultivation in more favourable ranges in
2016-667: Is a growing backlash, due mostly to companies using intellectual property law to prevent farmers from having the legal right to fix their equipment (or gain access to the information to allow them to do it). This has encouraged groups such as Open Source Ecology and Farm Hack to begin to make open source hardware for agricultural machinery. In addition on a smaller scale Farmbot and the RepRap open source 3D printer community has begun to make open-source farm tools available of increasing levels of sophistication. Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution , also known as
SECTION 20
#17327800918152112-810: Is a highly resilient crop, able to grow in varied and marginal environments, such as in regions of high altitude and latitude. Archaeobotanical evidence shows that barley had spread throughout Eurasia by 2,000 BCE. To further elucidate the routes by which barley cultivation was spread through Eurasia, genetic analysis was used to determine genetic diversity and population structure in extant barley taxa. Genetic analysis shows that cultivated barley spread through Eurasia via several different routes, which were most likely separated in both time and space. When hunter-gathering began to be replaced by sedentary food production it became more efficient to keep animals close at hand. Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their settlements, although in many cases there
2208-461: Is a tall building where grains, such as wheat and oats are stored. Farmers also use small round metal buildings to store their grain. These buildings are called grain bins . Dairy farming is a class of agriculture, where female cattle , goats , or other mammals are raised for their milk , which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy for processing and eventual retail sale There are many breeds of cattle that can be milked some of
2304-618: Is an agricultural country and about 80% of the total population are engaged in farming. Rice is mainly produced in Nepal along with fruits like apples. Dairy farming and poultry farming are also growing in Nepal . Farming is a significant economic sector in Australia . A farm is an area of land used for primary production which will include buildings. According to the UN, "green agriculture directs
2400-549: Is believed to be the homelands of the early Sino-Tibetan -speakers, associated with the Houli , Peiligang , Cishan , and Xinglongwa cultures , clustered around the Yellow River basin. It was the domestication centre for foxtail millet ( Setaria italica ) and broomcorn millet ( Panicum miliaceum ), with early evidence of domestication approximately 8,000 years ago, and widespread cultivation 7,500 years ago. ( Soybean
2496-510: Is fed directly to the cows, or stored as silage for use during the winter season. Additional dietary supplements are added to the feed to improve milk production. Poultry farms are devoted to raising chickens (egg layers or broilers ), turkeys , ducks , and other fowl , generally for meat or eggs . A pig farm is one that specializes in raising pigs for bacon, ham, and other pork products. They may be free range , intensive, or both. Farm control and ownership has traditionally been
2592-457: Is in the lower Yangtze River , believed to be the homelands of pre-Austronesians and associated with the Kauhuqiao , Hemudu , Majiabang , and Songze cultures . It is characterized by typical pre-Austronesian features, including stilt houses, jade carving, and boat technologies. Their diet were also supplemented by acorns , water chestnuts , foxnuts , and pig domestication. The second
2688-611: Is in the middle Yangtze River, believed to be the homelands of the early Hmong-Mien -speakers and associated with the Pengtoushan and Daxi cultures . Both of these regions were heavily populated and had regular trade contacts with each other, as well as with early Austroasiatic speakers to the west, and early Kra-Dai speakers to the south, facilitating the spread of rice cultivation throughout southern China. The millet and rice-farming cultures also first came into contact with each other at around 9,000 to 7,000 BP, resulting in
2784-560: Is limited to Northern Levant and Southern Turkey. A detailed satellite map study of a few archaeological sites in the Baluchistan and Khybar Pakhtunkhwa regions also suggests similarities in early phases of farming with sites in Western Asia. Pottery prepared by sequential slab construction, circular fire pits filled with burnt pebbles, and large granaries are common to both Mehrgarh and many Mesopotamian sites. The postures of
2880-625: Is not customarily used in describing cultures in the Americas. However, a broad similarity exists between Eastern Hemisphere cultures of the Neolithic and cultures in the Americas. Maize (corn), beans and squash were among the earliest crops domesticated in Mesoamerica : squash as early as 6000 BCE, beans no later than 4000 BCE, and maize beginning about 7000 BCE. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America . In what
2976-501: Is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower , sumpweed and goosefoot c. 2500 BCE . In the highlands of central Mexico, sedentary village life based on farming did not develop until the "formative period" in the second millennium BCE. Evidence of drainage ditches at Kuk Swamp on the borders of the Western and Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea indicates cultivation of taro and
Manor Farm - Misplaced Pages Continue
3072-467: Is often used for raising crops such as feed grains and hay for animal feeding. On some farms (Astro Farm) star-gazing became very popular because of the excellent optical quality in the desert. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) which investigates cosmic gamma rays is situated on Farm Göllschau in Namibia . Farm equipment has evolved over the centuries from simple hand tools such as
3168-411: Is one of the most important policies of the European Union and is helping in the change of farms from traditional family farms to larger production units. The policy has the objectives of increasing agricultural production, providing certainty in food supplies, ensuring a high quality of life for farmers, stabilizing markets, and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers. It was, until recently, operated by
3264-575: Is significantly below the 2005 U.S. poverty level of $ 19,874 for a family of four. In 2007, corn acres are expected to increase by 15% because of the high demand for ethanol, both in and outside of the U.S. Producers are expecting to plant 90.5 million acres (366,000 km ) of corn, making it the largest corn crop since 1944. In the UK, farm as an agricultural unit, always denotes the area of pasture and other fields together with its farmhouse, farmyard and outbuildings. Large farms, or groups of farms under
3360-471: Is the earliest Neolithic site in the north-west Indian subcontinent, dated as early as 8500 BCE. Neolithic domesticated crops in Mehrgarh include more than 90% barley and a small amount of wheat. There is good evidence for the local domestication of barley and the zebu cattle at Mehrgarh, but the wheat varieties are suggested to be of Near-Eastern origin, as the modern distribution of wild varieties of wheat
3456-424: Is the norm, with either government ownership of the land or common ownership by a local group. Especially in societies without widespread industrialized farming, tenant farming and sharecropping are common; farmers either pay landowners for the right to use farmland or give up a portion of the crops. Agribusiness is the industry , enterprises , and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in
3552-618: The Aegean have been carbon-dated to c. 6500 BCE at Knossos , Franchthi Cave , and a number of mainland sites in Thessaly . Neolithic groups appear soon afterwards in the Balkans and south-central Europe. The Neolithic cultures of southeastern Europe (the Balkans and the Aegean ) show some continuity with groups in southwest Asia and Anatolia (e.g., Çatalhöyük ). Current evidence suggests that Neolithic material culture
3648-577: The British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century, and the Green Revolution of the second half of the 20th century. Farming originated independently in different parts of the world, as hunter gatherer societies transitioned to food production rather than food capture. It may have started about 12,000 years ago with the domestication of livestock in the Fertile Crescent in western Asia, soon to be followed by
3744-614: The Fertile Crescent , and perhaps 8000 BCE in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Papua New Guinea in Melanesia . Everywhere, this transition is associated with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled , agrarian one, with the domestication of various plant and animal species – depending on the species locally available, and influenced by local culture. Archaeological research in 2003 suggests that in some regions, such as
3840-547: The Fertile Crescent . Many grinding stones are found with the early Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures and evidence has been found of a neolithic domesticated crop-based economy dating around 7,000 BP. Unlike the Middle East, this evidence appears as a "false dawn" to agriculture, as the sites were later abandoned, and permanent farming then was delayed until 6,500 BP with the Tasian culture and Badarian culture and
3936-622: The First Agricultural Revolution , was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement , making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to
Manor Farm - Misplaced Pages Continue
4032-719: The Kachi plain of Balochistan , Pakistan; the site has evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats). There is strong evidence for causal connections between the Near-Eastern Neolithic and that further east, up to the Indus Valley. There are several lines of evidence that support the idea of connection between the Neolithic in the Near East and in the Indian subcontinent. The prehistoric site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (modern Pakistan)
4128-780: The Levantine corridor that show early evidence of agriculture include Wadi Faynan 16 and Netiv Hagdud . Jacques Cauvin noted that the settlers of Aswad did not domesticate on site, but "arrived, perhaps from the neighbouring Anti-Lebanon , already equipped with the seed for planting" . In the Eastern Fertile Crescent, evidence of cultivation of wild plants has been found in Choga Gholan in Iran dated to 12,000 BP, with domesticated emmer wheat appearing in 9,800 BP, suggesting there may have been multiple regions in
4224-790: The Near East and then compared to available data from other Neolithic populations in Europe and also to modern populations from South Eastern Europe and the Near East. The obtained results show that substantial human migrations were involved in the Neolithic spread and suggest that the first Neolithic farmers entered Europe following a maritime route through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands . The earliest Neolithic sites in South Asia are Bhirrana in Haryana dated to 7570–6200 BCE , and Mehrgarh , dated to between 6500 and 5500 BP, in
4320-584: The Neolithic Revolution and first began around 12,000 years ago, near the beginning of the geological epoch of the Holocene around 12,000 years ago. It was the world's first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. Farming spread from the Middle East to Europe and by 4,000 BC people that lived in the central part of Europe were using oxen to pull plows and wagons. Subsequent step-changes in human farming practices were provoked by
4416-554: The Neolithic package , provided the basis for centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies , depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g. writing ), densely populated settlements, specialization and division of labour , more trade , the development of non-portable art and architecture , and greater property ownership. The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia ( c. 6,500 BP ); its emergence also heralded
4512-577: The bio-economy , in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit while satisfying the needs of consumers for products related to natural resources such as biotechnology , farms, food , forestry , fisheries , fuel , and fiber . Studies of business growth and performance in farming have found successful agricultural businesses are cost-efficient internally and operate in favorable economic, political, and physical-organic environments. They are able to expand and make profits, improve
4608-404: The genes of domesticated plants, he preferred theories of a single, or at most a very small number of domestication events for each taxon that spread in an arc from the Levantine corridor around the Fertile Crescent and later into Europe. Gordon Hillman and Stuart Davies carried out experiments with varieties of wild wheat to show that the process of domestication would have occurred over
4704-621: The hoe , through ox- or horse-drawn equipment such as the plough and harrow , to the modern highly technical machinery such as the tractor , baler and combine harvester replacing what was a highly labour-intensive occupation before the Industrial Revolution . Today much of the farm equipment used on both small and large farms is automated (e.g. using satellite guided farming). As new types of high-tech farm equipment have become inaccessible to farmers that historically fixed their own equipment, Wired magazine reports there
4800-535: The "farmstead". Enterprises where livestock are raised on rangeland are called ranches . Where livestock are raised in confinement on feed produced elsewhere, the term feedlot is usually used. In the US, in 1910 there were 6,406,000 farms and 10,174,000 family workers; In 2000 there were only 2,172,000 farms and 2,062,300 family workers. The share of U.S. farms operated by women has risen steadily over recent decades, from 5 percent in 1978 to 14 percent by 2007. In
4896-716: The 1st millennium CE, they also colonized Madagascar and the Comoros , bringing Southeast Asian food plants, including rice, to East Africa . On the African continent, three areas have been identified as independently developing agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands , the Sahel and West Africa . By contrast, Agriculture in the Nile River Valley is thought to have developed from the original Neolithic Revolution in
SECTION 50
#17327800918154992-619: The Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl millet . The kola nut was first domesticated in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in West Africa include African rice , yams and the oil palm . Agriculture spread to Central and Southern Africa in the Bantu expansion during the 1st millennium BCE to 1st millennium CE. The term "Neolithic"
5088-560: The Fertile Crescent where cereal domestication evolved roughly contemporaneously. The Heavy Neolithic Qaraoun culture has been identified at around fifty sites in Lebanon around the source springs of the River Jordan , but never reliably dated. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel , Jared Diamond argues that the vast continuous east–west stretch of temperate climatic zones of Eurasia and North Africa gave peoples living there
5184-582: The Neolithic advanced from one patch of fertile alluvial soil to another, bypassing mountainous areas. Analysis of radiocarbon dates show clearly that Mesolithic and Neolithic populations lived side by side for as much as a millennium in many parts of Europe, especially in the Iberian peninsula and along the Atlantic coast. The spread of the Neolithic from the Near East Neolithic to Europe
5280-657: The Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear, but region-specific. Once agriculture started gaining momentum, around 9000 BP, human activity resulted in the selective breeding of cereal grasses (beginning with emmer , einkorn and barley ), and not simply of those that favoured greater caloric returns through larger seeds. Plants with traits such as small seeds or bitter taste were seen as undesirable. Plants that rapidly shed their seeds on maturity tended not to be gathered at harvest, therefore not stored and not seeded
5376-561: The United States, there are over three million migrant and seasonal farmworkers; 72% are foreign-born, 78% are male, they have an average age of 36 and average education of 8 years. Farmworkers make an average hourly rate of $ 9–10 per hour, compared to an average of over $ 18 per hour for nonfarm labor. Their average family income is under $ 20,000 and 23% live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level. One-half of all farmworker families earn less than $ 10,000 per year, which
5472-460: The adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia, it transformed the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human prehistory into sedentary (non- nomadic ) societies based in built-up villages and towns. These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation, with activities such as irrigation and deforestation which allowed
5568-519: The arrival of crops and animals from the Near East. Bananas and plantains , which were first domesticated in Southeast Asia , most likely Papua New Guinea , were re-domesticated in Africa possibly as early as 5,000 years ago. Asian yams and taro were also cultivated in Africa. The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is coffee . In addition, khat , ensete , noog , teff and finger millet were also domesticated in
5664-735: The beginning of the Bronze Age . The relationship of the aforementioned Neolithic characteristics to the onset of agriculture, their sequence of emergence, and their empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic sites remains the subject of academic debate. It is usually understood to vary from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution . Prehistoric hunter-gatherers had different subsistence requirements and lifestyles from agriculturalists. Hunter-gatherers were often highly mobile and migratory, living in temporary shelters and in small tribal groups, and having limited contact with outsiders. Their diet
5760-667: The best producing ones include Holstein , Norwegian Red , Kostroma , Brown Swiss , and more. In most Western countries, a centralized dairy facility processes milk and dairy products, such as cream , butter , and cheese . In the United States, these dairies are usually local companies, while in the southern hemisphere facilities may be run by very large nationwide or trans-national corporations (such as Fonterra ). Dairy farms generally sell male calves for veal meat, as dairy breeds are not normally satisfactory for commercial beef production. Many dairy farms also grow their own feed, typically including maize, alfalfa , and hay. This
5856-406: The cultivation of crops. Modern units tend to specialize in the crops or livestock best suited to the region, with their finished products being sold for the retail market or for further processing, with farm products being traded around the world. A farm may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation or a company, may produce one or many types of produce, and can be
SECTION 60
#17327800918155952-488: The diversity of foods available, resulting in a decrease in the quality of human nutrition compared with that obtained previously from foraging , but because food production became more efficient, it released humans to invest their efforts in other activities and was thus "ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth". The Neolithic Revolution involved much more than
6048-408: The domestication of plants into crops . Archaeological data indicates that the domestication of various types of plants and animals happened in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene 11,700 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age. It was humankind's first historically verifiable transition to agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed
6144-467: The earliest evidence for advanced planning of plants for food consumption and suggests that humans at Ohalo II processed the grain before consumption. Tell Aswad is the oldest site of agriculture, with domesticated emmer wheat dated to 10,800 BP. Soon after came hulled, two-row barley – found domesticated earliest at Jericho in the Jordan valley and at Iraq ed-Dubb in Jordan . Other sites in
6240-689: The first region to domesticate the dromedary . Henri Fleisch discovered and termed the Shepherd Neolithic flint industry from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and suggested that it could have been used by the earliest nomadic shepherds . He dated this industry to the Epipaleolithic or Pre-Pottery Neolithic as it is evidently not Paleolithic , Mesolithic or even Pottery Neolithic . The presence of these animals gave
6336-420: The following season; successive years of harvesting spontaneously selected for strains that retained their edible seeds longer. Daniel Zohary identified several plant species as "pioneer crops" or Neolithic founder crops . He highlighted the importance of wheat, barley and rye, and suggested that domestication of flax , peas , chickpeas , bitter vetch and lentils came a little later. Based on analysis of
6432-473: The health of early agriculturalists and their domesticated livestock would have been increased numbers of parasites and disease-bearing pests associated with human waste and contaminated food and water supplies. Fertilizers and irrigation may have increased crop yields but also would have promoted proliferation of insects and bacteria in the local environment while grain storage attracted additional insects and rodents . The term 'neolithic revolution'
6528-563: The human population. Selectively propagated figs , wild barley and wild oats were cultivated at the early Neolithic site of Gilgal I , where in 2006 archaeologists found caches of seeds of each in quantities too large to be accounted for even by intensive gathering , at strata datable to c. 11,000 years ago. Some of the plants tried and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, at sites like Gilgal, were later successfully domesticated in other parts of
6624-638: The impetus of the Austronesian expansion which started with the migration of the Austronesian-speakers from Taiwan to the Philippines at around 5,000 BP. Austronesians carried rice cultivation technology to Island Southeast Asia along with other domesticated species. The new tropical island environments also had new food plants that they exploited. They carried useful plants and animals during each colonization voyage, resulting in
6720-468: The local market. The word in the sense of an agricultural land-holding derives from the verb "to farm" a revenue source, whether taxes, customs, rents of a group of manors or simply to hold an individual manor by the feudal land tenure of "fee farm". The word is from the medieval Latin noun firma , also the source of the French word ferme , meaning a fixed agreement, contract, from the classical Latin adjective firmus meaning strong, stout, firm. As in
6816-415: The lowlands may have been even earlier. CSIRO has found evidence that taro was introduced into the Solomon Islands for human use, from 28,000 years ago, making taro the earliest cultivated crop in the world. It seems to have resulted in the spread of the Trans–New Guinea languages from New Guinea east into the Solomon Islands and west into Timor and adjacent areas of Indonesia . This seems to confirm
6912-400: The medieval age virtually all manors were engaged in the business of agriculture, which was their principal revenue source, so to hold a manor by the tenure of "fee farm" became synonymous with the practice of agriculture itself. Farming has been innovated at multiple different points and places in human history. The transition from hunter-gatherer to settled, agricultural societies is called
7008-410: The population expanded and communities developed specialized workers and more advanced tools. The process was not as linear as was once thought, but a more complicated effort, which was undertaken by different human populations in different regions in many different ways. One of the world's most important crops, barley , was domesticated in the Near East around 11,000 years ago (c. 9,000 BCE). Barley
7104-401: The production of surplus food. Other developments that are found very widely during this era are the domestication of animals , pottery , polished stone tools, and rectangular houses. In many regions, the adoption of agriculture by prehistoric societies caused episodes of rapid population growth, a phenomenon known as the Neolithic demographic transition . These developments, sometimes called
7200-402: The productivity of land , labor , and capital , and keep their costs down to ensure market price competitiveness. Agribusiness is not limited to farming. It encompasses a broader spectrum through the agribusiness system which includes input supplies, value-addition , marketing , entrepreneurship , microfinancing , and agricultural extension . The land and buildings of a farm are called
7296-545: The rapid introduction of domesticated and semi-domesticated species throughout Oceania . They also came into contact with the early agricultural centres of Papuan -speaking populations of New Guinea as well as the Dravidian -speaking regions of South India and Sri Lanka by around 3,500 BP. They acquired further cultivated food plants like bananas and pepper from them, and in turn introduced Austronesian technologies like wetland cultivation and outrigger canoes . During
7392-429: The region a large advantage in cultural and economic development. As the climate in the Middle East changed and became drier, many of the farmers were forced to leave, taking their domesticated animals with them. It was this massive emigration from the Middle East that later helped distribute these animals to the rest of Afroeurasia . This emigration was mainly on an east–west axis of similar climates, as crops usually have
7488-622: The rest of Eurasia and North Africa, while it did not reach through the north–south axis of Africa to reach the Mediterranean climates of South Africa , where temperate crops were successfully imported by ships in the last 500 years. Similarly, the African Zebu of central Africa and the domesticated bovines of the fertile-crescent – separated by the dry sahara desert – were not introduced into each other's region. Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II ,
7584-509: The rise of civilizations and technological evolutions . However, higher population and food abundance did not necessarily correlate with improved health. Reliance on a very limited variety of staple crops can adversely affect health even while making it possible to feed more people. Maize is deficient in certain essential amino acids ( lysine and tryptophan ) and is a poor source of iron . The phytic acid it contains may inhibit nutrient absorption . Other factors that likely affected
7680-411: The same ownership, may be called an estate. Conversely, a small farm surrounding the owner's dwelling is called a smallholding and is generally focused on self-sufficiency with only the surplus being sold. In Europe, traditional family farms are giving way to larger production units where industrial agriculture and mechanization brings large crop yields. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
7776-423: The specialization they are being used for, such as a dairy rather than a dairy farm, a piggery, a market garden, etc. This also applies to feedlots, which are specifically developed to a single purpose and are often not able to be used for more general purpose (mixed) farming practices. In remote areas farms can become quite large. As with estates in England, there is no defined size or method of operation at which
7872-481: The speed of 0.6–1.3 km/yr (at 95% confidence level). Since the original human expansions out of Africa 200,000 years ago, different prehistoric and historic migration events have taken place in Europe. Considering that the movement of the people implies a consequent movement of their genes, it is possible to estimate the impact of these migrations through the genetic analysis of human populations. Agricultural and husbandry practices originated 10,000 years ago in
7968-454: The theories of Carl Sauer who, in "Agricultural Origins and Dispersals", suggested as early as 1952 that this region was a centre of early agriculture. Archaeologists trace the emergence of food-producing societies in the Levantine region of southwest Asia at the close of the last glacial period around 12,000 BCE, and developed into a number of regionally distinctive cultures by the eighth millennium BCE. Remains of food-producing societies in
8064-518: The title Manor Farm . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manor_Farm&oldid=980122603 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Farm There are about 570 million farms in
8160-449: The word "farm" may be used to describe wind power generation or puppy farm . Farms have special buildings. Some buildings, such as barns , may hold animals. There may be separate buildings for chickens and pigs. On dairy farms, a milking parlor is an important building. It is where dairy cows are milked. The milk is kept in a milking parlor until a milk tanker comes to get it. There are also special buildings for keeping grain . A silo
8256-446: The world, most of which are small and family-operated. Small farms with a land area of fewer than 2 hectares operate on about 12% of the world's agricultural land, and family farms comprise about 75% of the world's agricultural land. Modern farms in developed countries are highly mechanized. In the United States, livestock may be raised on rangeland and finished in feedlots , and the mechanization of crop production has brought about
8352-537: The world. Once early farmers perfected their agricultural techniques like irrigation (traced as far back as the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan ), their crops yielded surpluses that needed storage. Most hunter-gatherers could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with a sedentary dwelling could store their surplus grain. Eventually granaries were developed that allowed villages to store their seeds longer. So with more food,
8448-630: Was broomcorn millet , domesticated in East Asia. The earliest evidence of cheese -making dates to 5500 BCE in Kujawy , Poland . The diffusion across Europe, from the Aegean to Britain, took about 2,500 years (8500–6000 BP). The Baltic region was penetrated a bit later, around 5500 BP, and there was also a delay in settling the Pannonian plain . In general, colonization shows a "saltatory" pattern, as
8544-419: Was a distinction between relatively sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The animals' size, temperament, diet, mating patterns, and life span were factors in the desire and success in domesticating animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered a source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. The animal's ability as a worker (for example ploughing or towing), as well as
8640-568: Was also domesticated in northern China 4,500 years ago. Orange and peach also originated in China, being cultivated c. 2500 BCE . ) The agricultural centres in southern China are clustered around the Yangtze River basin. Rice was domesticated in this region, together with the development of paddy field cultivation, between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago. There are two possible centres of domestication for rice. The first
8736-422: Was built on relatively easy paths to individual farm ownership. However, the gradual modernization and mechanization of farming, which greatly increases both the efficiency and capital requirements of farming, has led to increasingly large farms. This has usually been accompanied by the decoupling of political power from farm ownership. In some societies (especially socialist and communist ), collective farming
8832-488: Was first studied quantitatively in the 1970s, when a sufficient number of Carbon 14 age determinations for early Neolithic sites had become available. In 1973, Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East ( Jericho ), demonstrating that the Neolithic spread at an average speed of about 1 km/yr. More recent studies (2005) confirm these results and yield
8928-665: Was introduced to Europe via western Anatolia. All Neolithic sites in Europe contain ceramics , and contain the plants and animals domesticated in Southwest Asia: einkorn , emmer , barley , lentils , pigs , goats , sheep , and cattle . Genetic data suggest that no independent domestication of animals took place in Neolithic Europe, and that all domesticated animals were originally domesticated in Southwest Asia. The only domesticate not from Southwest Asia
9024-476: Was invented by V. Gordon Childe in his book Man Makes Himself (1936). Childe introduced it as the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history, calling it a "revolution" to denote its significance, the degree of change to communities adopting and refining agricultural practices. The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BCE in
9120-524: Was the centre of domestication for three cereals (einkorn wheat, emmer wheat and barley), four legumes (lentil, pea, bitter vetch and chickpea), and flax. Domestication was a slow process that unfolded across multiple regions, and was preceded by centuries if not millennia of pre-domestication cultivation. Finds of large quantities of seeds and a grinding stone at the Epipalaeolithic site of Ohalo II , dating to around 19,400 BP, has shown some of
9216-794: Was well-balanced though heavily dependent on what the environment could provide each season. In contrast, because the surplus and plannable supply of food provided by agriculture made it possible to support larger population groups, agriculturalists lived in more permanent dwellings in more densely populated settlements than what could be supported by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The agricultural communities' seasonal need to plan and coordinate resource and manpower encouraged division of labour , which gradually led to specialization of labourers and complex societies . The subsequent development of trading networks to exchange surplus commodities and services brought agriculturalists into contact with outside groups, which promoted cultural exchanges that led to
#814185