The great irony of agriculture is that more efficient farming practices have invariably led to population increases. The very effort of meeting the demand for food also creates it. Some anthropologists speculate that the practice of agriculture was in itself a response to increasing population in approximately 10000 b.c. The simplest and earliest method of obtaining food, hunting and gathering, could support only a limited number of people over a given geographic area. Although, according to scholarly thought, people may have grown small numbers of vegetables or penned young animals to fatten in earlier times, reliance on agriculture as the main source of food may have come about largely when the population of a given region rose beyond the critical maximum that hunting alone could support. Agriculture provided a more reliable food supply. It also meant a higher yield and better quality of meat and produce, which in turn meant that people could live longer, remain healthier, and successfully raise more children.
Most scholars agree that Western agriculture had its origins in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and Palestine. However, other early centers of civilization in Asia, the Americas, and elsewhere also developed farming. Animal domestication and animal breeding began with the dog in prehistoric times. Dogs were raised for food, for hunting, and for pest control and only later as companions. Other animals--cattle, hogs, sheep, horses--were raised for their meat, for field work, for their manure, and for the consumption of crop waste. All these animals were bred from their wild counterparts, favor being given to those that possessed traits farmers found beneficial.
Plants were also domesticated. Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers were developed. The first fertilizers came from natural sources--manure, compost, and crop litter, but chemical fertilizers became popular after World War II and lured farmers away from crop rotation and into mass production of single crops, or monoculture. Perhaps the most significant technological development in farming was the plow. Presumably, early farming the world over utilized the technique practiced by native North Americans of making holes with sharp sticks for one or two seeds each, or else of simply throwing seed onto bare soil with little or no preparation. Although this method is practical for small gardens, planting large fields is laborious and time-consuming when done in this way.
With the development of the plow, which appeared in Mesopotamia in approximately 4000 b.c., planting could be done in rows, or furrows, instead of in holes, allowing more crops to be planted in less time and more food to be produced. The time saved in planting allowed more leisure for the development of other activities, such as industry and commerce. The Mesopotamian plow was a simple device with a wooden, stone, or bone protrusion to scratch furrows into the soil. Eventually, development of the plowshare, or blade, usually made of metal, increased the plow's efficiency. The Celtic tribes used iron plowshares by about 400 b.c. The invention of the iron plowshare in Central Europe around 600 a.d. led to a significant population increase.
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the gradual replacement of oxen with horses as plow animals also improved the efficiency of plowing. Mechanization of the farm began in earnest during the 1800s, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution. The invention of reapers, threshing machines, combine harvesters, and mowing machines greatly reduced the amount of manual labor farming required. The internal combustion engine gradually eliminated the need for animal labor during the 1900s.
One of the most controversial developments in agriculture is thedevelopment of the factory farming of animals. Practitioners view it as a useful means of producing more food at less cost, while animal rights activists protest the disregard for the animals' comfort and welfare it embodies. Although factory farming of a sort was practiced in Hellenistic and Roman times, when farmers, for instance, kept fowl caged or broke their legs and wings so they would not exercise and therefore fatten quickly, modern factory farming was first practiced in 1771 by an English farmer named Moody who kept his cattle tightly confined in a dark, stuffy room. The profuse heat from their breath and warm bodies caused them to fatten faster and yield better meat.
Such intensive animal production has been widely adopted during the twentieth century. Hogs are kept in so-called sweat boxes, calves are bled to produce whiter veal, and chickens are mass-produced in large buildings, never being allowed contact with the ground or fresh air. Growth hormones in fodder make the animals mature at unnatural rates. Mass animal production in such close quarters creates a potential for the rapid spread of animal diseases that could devastate a farmer's operation. To combat this, antibiotics were developed during the 1950s to kill disease-carrying bacteria, through injection or by mixing it with the animals' feed. Recently, much concern has developed over the possible effects of hormone-and antibiotic-laden fodder on the human consumers of animal products.
Another concern over chemicals in agriculture involves the widespread use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides around the world. Chemical agents, used mainly since World War II, have lead to serious pollution crises in many areas. Even the application of natural manure may have detrimental effects. For instance, recent fish kills in the Chesapeake Bay have been attributed to generations of manure applications by Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, which have overloaded the bay waters with nitrogen and deprived the fish of oxygen. Accumulations of chemicals in farm products have become a concern for the consumer. The long-term health effects of chemicals,in food have yet to be fully understood. Poor farming practices can lead to wind and water erosion and depletion of the topsoil. The plowing and overgrazing of unstable prairie soils by American settlers,in the West led to the devastating dust storms of the 1930s. Similar consequences have been felt in the famine-plagued Sahel of sub-Saharan Africa.
Modernization of farming has enabled highly efficient production. The savings, however, have been offset by inflation and increased operating costs. Only those farmers with keen business skills and luck are surviving. During the last fifty years, the number of farms has decreased while the size of farms has increased. The small family farm is rapidly being replaced by the large corporate farm. As farm production has greatly increased, so has the world's population. The resulting stress on food production systems spurs perennial fear that failure of any of the crucial links in the mass production puzzle, such as water supply, could undermine the entire scheme.
Today's farms are really agribusinesses, the most successful of which rely on sophisticated computerization and global satellite weather forecasting to analyze national and international trends and needs. More farms use specialized services instead of relying on integrated farming in which all operations are conducted by the farmer and his employees; outside operators and consultants are hired to provide advice and services. The 1996 Freedom to Farm bill, which decreases subsidies over a period of years, forces farmers to respond to global market pressures, for example by changing the amount and variety of crops they plant, or by understanding the relationship of grain exports to global beef markets. Closer to home, public concerns about water quality including agricultural runoff in rivers and streams is a continuing worry.
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