Product

Many kinds of products are produced by agriculture. I will explain some main products.

・Rice
→The annual amount of production exceeds 610 million tons. The rice is said to be world three major cereals with wheat, corn, and the amount of production is largely increased. The amount of production is an increase basic tone, but the stock quantities decrease from 2000 in spite of demand increasing . The stock rate fell below 20% in 2006. Around 90% of rice is produced in an Asian area and is used. The greatest country of origin is China, and India, Indonesia follow.
  The quantity of trade of rice is a tendency to increase. The greatest export country is Thailand, and United States of America, India, Pakistan follow. Higher four countries occupy 70% of the quantity of world trade. The rice has less quantity of trade for amount of production than other cereals. Because it tends to be used as basic food in the country, the rice comes to have low ratio of quantity of trade among the amount of production.
  In Asia and Africa and Japan, the rice is eaten as main foods and is used as reckoning alignment of the main greens like a potato and pasta in Europe and America. In addition, in Europe and America and Southeast Asia, the rice is used as dessert. The rice is used for liquor and a rice cake, a candy, miso, soy sauce, vinegar for raw materials.

↓Rice's picture



・Wheat
→The wheat is cultivated from the temperate zone to the subarctic zone. The wheat resists drying, and the production limit is annual precipitation 500mm. When irrigation facilities are set, wheat can be cultivated it in the drier area. The world amount of production of wheat are 30% in North America, 20% in Europe, 40% in Asia. The world amount of production of wheat in 2006 is 605,950,000 tons and equal to amount of production of rice. Wheat is farm products with much amount of production next to corn. China, India, the United States of America, Russia, France produce just 50% of the total amount of production of the wheat.
  The seed of harvested wheat powders it and is used as wheat flour. The wheat flour becomes the raw materials such as bread and udon, the Chinese noodles, cake, pasta. A kind, a use of the wheat flour vary according to the hardness of the grain. Seeds inferior to in quality or appearing in flour milling become the fodder.

↓Wheat's picture



・Soybean
→The soybean was cultivated widely all over the world, and there was already it in Japan in Jomon period. The countries where the production of soybeans is prosperous are the United States, Brazil, Argentina, China. Expansion of the soybean farmland with the natural wood felling advances in Brazil and is brought into question. In addition, the unemployment problem occurs because there are few necessary workers in one farm.
 The soybean includes protein, fat, iron content, minerals and calcium and is processed into oil, medicine, feed, and so on. Inthe world, 87% of soybeans are used for oil.

↓Soybean's picture

Kind

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 Agriculture has many kind of ways. Products, scale and place(country) are different from each way. I will explain some main ways.

・Irrigation
→Irrigation is to supply water from outside to a agricultural place artificially. Irrigation is used when we increase production of farm products, and maintenance the landscape in a dry zone and the soil of the dry season. Besides, irrigation is used to prevent compaction of the soil, control a weed in the field of the cereals and protect the crops from frost damage.The irrigation is divided into farm irrigation to supply water to a field and rice field irrigation to supply water to a rice field. 
 The role that irrigation serves as for social development is very big. Because the productivity of the farmland remarkably increases by irrigation, a surplus product grows. Surplus products support occupations to produce value other than agriculture, and support the life of commerce and industry people, the armed forces and the sovereignty noblemen. In this way, the productivity improvement by the irrigation brings the society a change.

 ↓ Irrigation in India
 






・Daily farming
→Dairy farming is stock raising to breed a cow or a goat, and to produce milk and dairy products.  
 The highlands which are coolness are land suitable for milk cow breeding. People put the several hundred milk cow out to pasture in one house at ranches and breed it in a cattle shed. Most of the pasturage-based dairy farming is not performed in Japan, and it is the pasturage in the cow house mainly, and the dairy farming by the nature pasturage does not reach 2%.
 Dairy farming is prosperous in Hokkaido, Iwate, Chiba, Tochigi, Nagano, Kumamoto in Japan. The national first place of the amount of agriculture income is Tsurui-mura, Hokkaido of the dairy farming. In late years, the problem of the fresh milk surplus becomes remarkable because consumptions of the drinking milk decrease by the rise of the competing drink. In addition, the producer milk price falls with this, too.

↓ Daily farming in Hokkaido
 

 ・Plantation
　→The plantation is a large-scale farm to adopt a method of the large-scale factory production and cast a large quantity of capital into very large farmlands in the tropical zone, subtropical local and cultivate the single crop in large quantities by using cheap work force such as indigenous people or the black ivory. 
 This "cheap work force" is the native of the colonies or slaves, and it is the farmer of developing countries now, and the human rights of the worker may be considered to be a problem. In addition, the environmental disruption such as the issue of water pollution, deforestation, pesticide is often considered to be a problem.
 Most of plantation crops are salable farm products, and countries can earn foreign currency by exporting these, but the country depending on this can't manage economy when this is affected by the natural disaster. And main plantation crops are Sugar cane (Brazil, India, China, Malaysia), tea (India, China, Sri Lanka), Cacao (Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia), coffee (Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia), banana (India, Ecuador, Philippines, Brazil), natural rubber Thailand, Indonesia, India, Malaysia).


↓ Plantation in ancient time
  

History

                              Beginning and Widespread

  It is said that the first agriculture began in Levant. Besides, the remains indicating what people plant the kind of the plant which grew in the nature till then and harvested in Egypt and India are found. In addition, agriculture began independently in Chinese (Yellow River basin, Chang River basin) African Sahel, New Guinea, each place of North and South America. It is about B.C. 7000 that small farming began in Egypt. It is revealed that I cultivated wheat and barley in the Indian subcontinent in about B.C. 7000. At the same time, cultivation of rice begins in East Asia. China and the Indonesian farmer come to cultivate the beans such as taro, soybean and the azuki more. Population has begun to increase at speed not to be able to compare with then by progress of such agriculture.

  Corn and cassava came to be cultivated as farm products in the American continent in about B.C. 5200. Farm products of the American continent origin include a potato, a tomato, some beans, cigarettes elsewhere.Fields developed in the Andes in South America. the Animals such as marmot, llama and alpaca were domesticated in South America, too. People made a progenitor of the modern corn in MesoAmerica more than 6,000 years ago. It gradually spread out in North America and became the main food of the Native American when European people arrived at the New World. The crops native of MesoAmerica include several hundred kinds of pumpkins and beans elsewhere. It is MesoAmerica to have assumed a cacao the crops. 
 

　　　　　　　　      Agriculture in ancient 


                                Modern Agriculture

  After 1492, the exchange of the global farm products kind and domestic animal kind began. The main crops brought in Europe by North and South America include a tomato, corn, a potato, a cassava, cocoa, a cigarette. On the contrary, farm products brought into the new world include wheat, spice, coffee, sugar cane. The most important domestic animal brought into the new world includes a horse and a dog. It was not an edible domestic animal, but the horse and the dog came to play a productive role in the agriculture of North and South America immediately. 
  Farming technique, agricultural machinery, improvement of the cultivate advanced by the early 19th century, and the harvests per unit area increased markedly in comparison with the Middle Ages. Most farming became  possible on speed and a scale by sudden progress of the mechanization of the early 20th century from the end of 19th century. By such a progress, We became able to cultivate the considerably high-quality crops in countries such as United States of America, Argentina, Israel, Germany. 
  Productivity improves the agriculture of the 20th century and omitted trouble with artificial manure and a pesticide, but it causes water pollution, and movement to promote organic farming produces it. 
  However, concern occurs in a sustainability about such an intensive agriculture. Quality of the soil decreases by intensive agriculture in Asia such as India, and the influence on environment of artificial manure and the pesticide is concerned about. We usually cultivate a single kind by the intensive agriculture, but a disease and the pest become easy to  occur thereby too, and come to cannot but depend on a pesticide.
 

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Agriculture's  machine