COURSE CODE: AGR 201.1
COURSE TITLE: GENERAL AGRICULTURE
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
UNIVERSITY OF PORT HARCOURT
DEFINITION OF AGRICULTURE
Agriculture can be defined as the art, the science, and business of cultivating crops and
rearing livestock for economic purposes. At certain stages of human development, agriculture
used to be the only known means of living. It is derived from the Latin terms ager referring to
the soil and cultura its cultivation. Agriculture is a broad term encompassing all aspects of
crop production, horticulture, livestock farming, forestry etc. Agriculture is the most
comprehensive word used to denote the many ways in which crop plants and domestic
animals sustain the global human population by providing food and other products. But the
word has come to subsume a very wide spectrum of activities that are integral to agriculture
and have their own descriptive terms, such as cultivation, domestication, horticulture,
arboriculture, and vegeculture, as well as forms of livestock management such as mixed crop-
livestock farming, pastoralism, and transhumance. The scope of agriculture has widened,
with interrelated sectors over-lapping one another; and in the present scenario, each of these
sectors is as important as any other! Many different attributes are used too to define particular
forms of agriculture, such as soil type, frequency of cultivation, and principal crops or
animals. The term agriculture is occasionally restricted to crop cultivation excluding the
raising of domestic animals, although it usually implies both activities.
Agriculture not only supports humans for their subsistence, but helps a large number of
industries too. Agriculture forms the raw material for numerous farm products based
industries. The basic products, resulting from agricultural activities, are processed in big
factories, before the final product is marketed. As such, agriculture generates employment,
both for people working in the farming sector as well as those in the industrial, agriculture-
based sector. These days, agriculture has become an important commercial activity. A variety
of crops are grown, which can be classified as -Food crops, Commercial crops, Fibre crops,
Beverage crops. Agriculture has benefited a great deal from the various advancements in the
field of science and technology - with modern machines making the 'field' jobs much easier
than ever before. All over the world, agriculture is managed efficiently with the help of
modern farm equipment. In the US, farmers rely much more on technology than on manual
labour. Machines are used for all important farm operations like - tilling, sowing, harvesting,
sorting of fruits, etc. Most farmers prefer employing those labourers who are skilful, and who
can operate upon their tractors, combines and harvesters. In fact, farmers are also ever so
ready to try out every new development in the variety of crops, pesticides, fertilizers and the
like.
The importance of agriculture also lies in the fact that it supports the export sector also - most
of the farmers in the United States produce largely for exports, as the soil produce is quite
fertile, and coupled with modern technology, the returns are huge. Some of the major farm
products are crops like - rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton, jute, tea, coffee and rubber - which
are produced in most parts of the world. In countries that export surplus farm output,
agriculture is all the more significant, and the agricultural production is fairly high. As the
farmer gets a good profit, his financial position, especially in developed countries, is better
than many other entrepreneurs. He is now able to purchase the latest machinery, use latest
,techniques of farming, buy new and improved hybrid varieties of seeds, and use the best
fertilizers to increase productivity.
Nowadays, there are improvements in wholesale marketing as well as transportation of farm
products. The use of refrigeration systems and efficient rail transport has made possible the
safe delivery of perishable farm products like dairy products, vegetables, and fruits. With
barely 4% of total population of United States engaged in agriculture, they have huge
exportable surplus.
Cultivation
Cultivation is an activity through which humans become directly involved in the management
of the lives and life cycles of certain plants. In practice, cultivation involves manipulation of
soil, water, and other components of the plant environment. At its most basic, it involves
sowing of seeds on soil which has been cleared of other vegetation. It usually involves
preparation of the soil by tillage. Tillage methods and tools vary from simple handheld
devices. Other important variables include the addition of nutrients to the soil by such means
as manuring, multiple cropping with nitrogen-fixing species (usually legumes of the family
Fabaceae), or using crop rotations with legumes or fallow periods. This represents an
important component of cultivation, i.e., scheduling the seasons of sowing and harvesting and
inter-annual patterns in crop rotation and fallowing. Cultivation represents an important
change in human strategy as people start to manipulate the soil and the composition of plant
communities to enhance yields of particular plants later.
Domestication
Domestication is most clearly defined as a biological phenomenon, that is, by traits in crops
that result from adaptation to cultivation and by which they differ from close wild relatives.
Domestication can be recognized as sets of characters that define domesticated crops. A
second connected trait is reduction in aids to wild seed dispersal. Plants often have a range of
structures that aid seed dispersal, including hairs, barbs, awns, and even the general shape of
the spikelet in grasses. Thus domesticated wheat spikelets are less hairy, have shorter or no
awns, and are plump, whereas in the wild they are heavily haired, barbed, and aerodynamic in
shape. Varieties of wild rice are always awned and heavily barbed, while many cultivars are
awnless and those with awns have fewer barbs. Rather than being positively selected by
harvesting, this comes about by removal of natural selection for wild-type dispersal
adaptations, and therefore under domestication, such traits require less metabolic expenditure.
This trait may sometimes be visible in archaeological botanical material but is rare and non-
diagnostic and does not provide a definitive means of identifying domestication
archaeologically. Because this trait shifts gradually and non-diagnostically, it can be regarded
as indicating “semi-domestication.”
Scope and Importance of Agriculture
Concerning the scope of agriculture, the field has as much scope as other subjects. It consists
of numerous subjects including agronomy, soil science, plant pathology, entomology,
microbiology, agro-forestry, horticulture, agriculture economics, meteorology, seed
technology, plant genetics, plant biotechnology and a lot more. Compared to other subjects it
includes a vast range of different subjects which is unique to the course of agriculture.
Agriculture is the most important enterprise in the world.
, Agriculture is a production plant where the free gifts of nature such as land, water, air, soil
energy, etc. are used as inputs and then converted into a single primary unit that is crop plants
and their yield which are indispensable for human beings. Those primary units are consumed
by animals and are converted into secondary units like milk, meat, eggs, wool, honey, silk,
etc.
IMPORTANCE
1. Provides employment: Agriculture has the contribution of 16% in the gross
domestic product (GDP) of the country. The agricultural sector also provides
livelihood to two-thirds of the population. The agricultural sector is responsible for
the employment of 58% of country’s workforce.
2. Significant contribution in country’s exports: This sector accounts for about 15%
of the total export earnings and provides raw material to almost all the industries i.e.
textiles, silk, rice, rubber, paper, flour mills, milk products industries.
3. An important source of resource mobilization: As the people in rural areas are not
very rich, it proves as one of the biggest markets for low-priced consumer goods.
4. Agriculture is the Food Security of the country: If the agricultural sector of a
country is strong, it acts as a wall in maintaining food security and in the process,
national security as well.
5. Important allied sectors: There are many allied sectors of agriculture like
horticulture, silviculture, poultry, dairy, and fisheries. They have a very important role
in the development the rural masses. So there is a need for the balanced development
of agriculture and allied sectors.
ECOLOGICAL ZONES IN NIGERIA AND FARMING
THE ENVIRONMENT
The environment may be said to be all external conditions that affect an organism or other
specific system during its life time. It is the result of interaction between nonliving and living
parameters. The non-living parameter can also be referred to as abiotic and the living
parameter can also be referred to as biotic. Important parameters to be noted in Barrow's
definition include:
1. Biotic factors; this includes all living-organisms i.e plants and animals (In a general sense).
2. Abiotic factors: this includes all non-living organisms such as mountains, rain, soil, (these
are the physical parameters). Others include pH - acidity or alkalinity and other chemical
factors.
3 The interaction between these biotic factors. (i.e biotic and abiotic interact in combination
with the organism.
For instance, the environment in which a fish lives in is the sea. The sea being its
environment has some parameters that influence it including among others, light,
temperature, turbidity, types of seas bed-rock, (abiotic).Others include the other aquatic
animals present in the sea, plants and the use or abuse of the sea. All these parameters'
interaction with one another and with the fish combines to determine what the environment of
the fish eventually turns out to be. The concept of the environment in its totality is as
complete as human with far ranging implications and challenges.
