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Organic Farming, production system that avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetically produced fertilizers, pesticides, growth

regulators, and livestock feed additives. As far as possible, it relies on crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, legumes, green manures, off-farm organic wastes, and aspects of biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and tillage, to supply plant nutrients, and to control insects, weeds, and other pests. Organic farming methods are widely used in underdeveloped and developing countries, largely because of economics and a lack of chemicals. However, they are becoming more widely accepted in developed countries as a reaction to intensive or factory farming conditions. Organic farming is known by different names in different countries, and the estimated 16 different terms in use include biological farming, regenerative farming, and sustainable farming. Biological farming is the term most favoured in Europe, while the United Kingdom and the United States prefer organic farming. It is also known by the term biodynamic farming, although, strictly speaking, this is part of a whole philosophy that includes education, art, nutrition, and religion, as well as agriculture. Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian social philosopher and founder of anthroposophy, is acknowledged as the creator of biodynamic farming. Much of the credit for the modern organic farming movement is attributed to Lady Eve Balfour, born at the end of the 19th century, the daughter of a wealthy British family, who, in addition to displaying talents as a jazz trombonist and pilot, took a keen interest in agriculture. Her research work in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in the seminal book The Living Soil, published in 1944. The interest this aroused led to the birth of the Soil Association in 1946. The Soil Association, along with other groups such as the British Organic Farmers and the Organic Growers Association, exists to research, develop, and promote sustainable relationships between the soil, plants, animals, people, and the biosphere, in order to produce healthy food and other products while protecting and enhancing the environment. A further major figure in the movement was the German writer and economist Ernst Schumacher who encapsulated much of the thinking behind a return to the soil in the book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, published in 1973. Although found to some extent in most countries of the world, organic farming methods are mostly found in northern Europe, with Austria, which has about 6 per cent of its productive land area under organic systems, in the lead, just ahead of Germany. Holland and Denmark are also major organic suppliers. Only about 0.3 per cent of the United Kingdom's land area is farmed organically.

The UK Register of Organic Food Standards (UKROFS) was set up in 1987, and two years later published its standards for the industry based on guidelines laid down by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an international charity founded in 1972. The European Council Regulation no. 2092/91 on organic crop produce was introduced in July 1991, followed by a regulation of animal products four years later.

Wheat Field Wheat has been grown throughout temperate regions of the world since prehistoric times. Although wheats primary use is as a flour, it is also used in brewing and distilling, as livestock feed, and even as a coffee substitute. Russia, Ukraine, China, and the United States lead the world in the production of wheat.

Norfolk Four-Course Rotation This diagram illustrates the classic form of the Norfolk four-course rotation system, which allowed a great and sustainable increase in productivity from farmland. In the first year, fields were sown with wheat, which was then harvested and sold. In the second year, root crops were grown on the land and fed to animals, which were then sold; the animals manure was used to fertilize the land. In the third year, barley (with soil-enriching clover) was sown and manured; then ryegrass was sown in the fourth year, fixing valuable nitrogen into the soil and providing direct grazing for animals which fertilized the fields before being sold, ready for the wheat crop which would begin the cycle again.

Pest Control or Pollution?

Pest control has become a difficult issue for farmers because of its potential environmental impact. Although the insecticide being sprayed on this potato field will eliminate a generation of Colorado potato beetles, it may also contaminate local food and water sources.

I INTRODUCTION Pest Control, any of a wide range of environmental interventions that have as their objective a reduction in the incidence of insect pests, plant pathogens, and weed populations, to enable maximum production of high-quality food and other crops. Specific control techniques include chemical, physical, and biological mechanisms. Ninety per cent of the world is dependent for food supplies on just 15 major crop and seven animal species. Despite all the control efforts used, pests annually destroy about 35 per cent of all crops worldwide. Even after food is harvested, insects, micro-organisms, rodents, and birds inflict a further 10 to 20 per cent loss, bringing the total destruction to about 40 or 50 per cent. Despite many areas of the world facing serious food shortages, industrial and other development is reducing the area of land used for growing food. Pest control permits more intensive use of crop land for growing the blemish-free, quality products found on supermarket shelves. II CHEMICAL CONTROLS Pesticide is the name applied to all types of chemical agents used in pest control. Pesticides worth about 16 billion were used worldwide in 1993. The rate of return for this outlay varies but is generally several-fold. Most chemical compounds are synthesized in purpose-built production plants serving one or more continents. Some of the compounds in everyday use are totally synthetic but others have their origins in chemicals that already exist in nature but are then enhanced or further developed by scientists. The herbicide glufosinate ammonium was first isolated from cultures collected in the Cameroun rainforest in central Africa. The sulphonylurea herbicides, which have made pesticide handling much easier because of the small amounts needed for high activity, were first discovered by German medical researchers but discarded for nearly 20 years until researchers in the United States discovered their activity against weeds. Western Europe is the world's largest market for fungicides, which are necessary to control the varied fungi pathogens which flourish among small grain cereal crops and vines. Powdery mildew (Erisyphe graminis) is probably the world's most important fungal disease and a major target for new fungicides because of its ability to attack many plants, from wheat and barley to vines, causing about 300 million of yield loss in cereals alone. In Japan and south-eastern Asia, where rice is a major food source, specific fungicides are needed to control rice blast ( Pyricularia oryzae), which causes 180 million of yield loss, or rice blight (Pellicularia sasakii), with 160 million of losses. Many effective fungicides used today belong to either the triazole or the morpholine groups of compounds. New triazole compounds, including

epoxiconazole, tebuconazole, and fluquinconazole are still being developed for worldwide use. To overcome the ability of fungi pathogens to adapt to pesticides and generate resistance, it is now common practice to combine fungicides which have different modes of action. By the year 2000, a new generation of fungicides, known as strobilurins, and based on naturally occurring fungi toxic to other fungi pathogens, will be in use. Herbicide use varies according to farming system and crop, but herbicides represent nearly half by value of all pesticides used. In those countries with less intensive systems, it may only be economic to use older compounds such as 2,4-D to kill broadleaved weeds. These older herbicides are measured in kilograms per hectare rather than the much smaller grams per hectare requirements of the sulphonylureas. Despite being highly active in killing a wide range of weed species, these new herbicides have a short persistence in soil and break down into harmless elements. Herbicides can be soil applied but most new materials are sprayed on developing weeds, interfering with their growing systems without harming crop plants. Total herbicides, including paraquat, glufosinate ammonium, and glyphosate, can only be used before crops emerge. However, new varieties of potato, wheat, sugar beet, and tobacco have been developed which contain herbicide-resistance genes. A few new cereal herbicides for grass weed control require the addition of a chemical which enhances the natural defences of the cereal plant against compounds such as fenoxaprop ethyl while it kills the target weeds. Insecticides are the smallest world market for pesticides, worth about 4.5 billion in 1993, or 28 per cent of the total pesticide market. They are often the most controversial because of the untoward environmental effects on wildlife of early organochlorines which are either banned or strictly controlled in most countries. Because less money is earned from insecticides, and because of the public concern about harm caused to nontargets such as bees, manufacturers have since carried out less development since the introduction of the highly successful pyrethroids. However, insects are considered ideal targets for the new generation of biopesticides. Biotechnology is augmenting pest control in different ways. Potentially the most controversial is the engineering of man-made viruses to target only certain larvae or insect pests when sprayed on crops. The viruses, which are harmless to other species, self-destruct when their toxic work is finished. Other approaches include synthesizing the natural semiochemicals, pheromones, and allelochemics, produced by insects to warn their fellow insects of danger and frighten them away from crops. Antifeedants are compounds that can be sprayed around fields to stop insect pests from eating, so that they starve to death. Tiny worms known as nematodes can also be sprayed on fields for picking up by pests such as slugs; they later explode inside the slugs' guts. These are only the first successful examples of many hundreds of

species of viruses, protozoa, fungi, and nematodes that parasitize insects and weeds and are under investigation as selective control agents. III NONCHEMICAL CONTROLS

Handpulling or hoeing of weeds has long been mechanized, and other nonchemical controls are used by farmers. The ploughing into the ground of weed plants, seeds, or fungal pathogens attached to crop residues, can be as effective as chemical control. Through genetic engineering, the natural resistance of crop plants to both disease and insect pests is being increased by the introduction of specific resistance genes. Integrated pest management (IPM) is a system which brings together controls by cultivation, crop rotation, strengthened crop varieties, and strategic use of lower rates of pesticide to equal or better the yields obtained from full chemical control. E Scientific Agriculture By the 16th century, the population was increasing in Europe, and agricultural production was again expanding. The nature of agriculture there and in other areas was to change considerably in succeeding centuries. Several reasons can be identified. Europe was cut off from Asia and the Middle East by an extension of Turkish power. New economic theories were being put into practice, directly affecting agriculture. Also, continued wars between England and France, within each of these countries, and in German states consumed capital and human resources. E1 Colonial Agriculture A new period of exploration and colonization was undertaken to circumvent Turkeys control of the spice trade, to provide homes for religious refugees, and to provide wealth for European nations convinced that only precious metals constituted wealth. Colonial agriculture was carried out not only to feed the colonists but also to produce cash crops and to supply food for the home country. This meant cultivation of such crops as sugar, cotton, tobacco, and tea and production of animal products such as wool and hides. From the 15th to the 19th centuries the slave trade provided the necessary labourers. Slaves from Africa worked, for instance, in the Caribbean area on sugar plantations and in North America on indigo and cotton plantations. Native Americans were virtually enslaved in Mexico, where a system known as peonage operated. Indentured slaves from Europe, and especially from the prisons of England, provided both skilled and unskilled labour in many American colonies.

Ultimately, however, both slavery and serfdom were substantially wiped out in the 19th century. When encountered by the Spanish conquistadors, the more advanced Native Americans in the New World had intensive agricultural economies but no draught or riding animals and no wheeled vehicles. Squash, beans, peas, and corn had long since been domesticated. Land was owned by clans and other kinship groups or by ruling tribes that had formed sophisticated governments, but not by individuals or individual families. Several civilizations had risen and fallen in Central and South America by the 16th century. Those met by the Spanish were the Aztec, Inca, and Maya. E2 Breeding of Plants and Animals The scientific revolution resulting from the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment in Europe encouraged experimentation in agriculture as well as in other fields. Trial-and-error efforts in plant breeding produced improved crops, and a few new strains of cattle and sheep were developed. Notable was the Guernsey cow, still a heavy milk producer today. The process of enclosure was greatly speeded up in the 18th century, and individual landowners could determine the disposition of land and of pasture, previously subject to common use. Crop rotation, involving alternation of legumes with grain, was more readily practised outside the village strip system inherited from the manorial period. E3 Enclosures In England, where scientific farming was most efficient, enclosure brought about a fundamental reorganization of landownership. From 1660 onward, the owners of the largest tracts of land had begun to add to their properties, frequently at the expense of small independent farmers. By the Victorian era, the agricultural pattern was based on the relationship between the landowner, dependent on rents; the farmer, producer of crops; and the landless labourer. Drainage brought more land into cultivation, and, with the Industrial Revolution, farm machinery was introduced. E4 Mechanical Advances Horsedrawn Thresher Before the advent of industrial equipment, harvesting could be an enormous project, requiring several days of intense physical labour by both farmers and their livestock. Threshers and harvesters were originally powered by animals, with farmers walking beside or behind the animal to guide it through a field. A complicated array of leather straps distribute the weight of this thresher over a horses back.Lopez and Medina/Rapho/Photo Researchers, Inc.

It is not possible to fix a clear decade or series of events as the start of the agricultural revolution through technology. Among the important advances were the

purposeful selective breeding of livestock, begun in the early 1700s, and the spreading of limestone on farm soils in the late 1700s. Mechanical improvements of the traditional wooden plough began in the mid-1600s with small iron points fastened on to the wood with strips of leather. In 1797, Charles Newbold, a blacksmith in Burlington, New Jersey, United States, introduced the cast-iron mouldboard plough. The mould-board turns the soil and breaks it up, pushing it to one side; this type of plough is still the most widely used. John Deere, another American blacksmith, further improved the plough in the 1830s and manufactured it in steel. Cotton Gin Cotton is one of the most important and versatile fibres used in industry today, but until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, mass production of the crop was too difficult and time-consuming to be profitable. The gin was designed to separate raw cotton fibres from seeds and other foreign materials before baling and marketing. It enabled one person to do the work previously done by 50 handpickers, and this efficiency spurred the rapid spread of cotton plantations throughout the South in the United States. The design remains virtually unchanged to the present day.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE Other notable inventions included the seed drill of the English agriculturist Jethro Tull, developed in the early 1700s and progressively improved for more than a century; the reaper of the American Cyrus McCormick in 1831; and numerous new horse-drawn threshers, cultivators, grain and grass cutters, rakes, and corn shellers. By the late 1800s, steam power was frequently used to replace animal power in drawing ploughs and in operating threshing machinery. The demand for food for urban workers and raw materials for industrial plants produced a realignment of world trade. Science and technology developed for industrial purposes were carried over into agriculture, eventually resulting in the agribusinesses of the mid-20th century. E5 Pest Control In the 17th and 18th centuries the first systematic attempts were made to study and control pests. Before this time, hand-picking and spraying were the usual methods of pest control. In the 19th century, poisons of various types were developed for use in sprays; biological controls such as the use of predatory insects were also used. Resistant plant varieties were cultivated; this was particularly successful with the European grapevine, in which non-resistant European grapebearing stems were grafted on to resistant American rootstocks to defeat the Phylloxera aphid after it was accidentally introduced into France. E6 Transport Improvements in transport affected agriculture. Roads, canals, and railway lines enabled farmers to obtain necessary supplies and to market their produce over a wider area. Food could be protected in transport and shipped more economically

than before as a result of rail, ship, and refrigeration developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Efficient use of these developments led to increasing specialization and eventual changes in the location of agricultural suppliers. In the last quarter of the 19th century, for example, Australian and North American suppliers displaced European suppliers of grain in the European market. When grain production proved unprofitable for European farmers, or an area became more urbanized, specialization in dairying, cheesemaking, and other products was emphasized. F The Green Revolution The impetus towards increased food production in the era following World War II was a result of a new population explosion. A so-called green revolution, involving selective breeding of traditional crops for high yields, new hybrids, and intensive cultivation methods adapted to the climates and cultural conditions of densely populated countries such as India, temporarily stemmed the pressure for more food. A worldwide shortage of petroleum in the mid-1970s, however, reduced the supplies of nitrogen fertilizer helpful to the success of the new varieties. Erratic weather and natural disasters such as drought and floods continue to reduce crop levels throughout the world. Famine is still widespread in many parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa. These problems still determine the pace and nature of agricultural change and development. SeeEnvironment; Food Supply, World.

Feudal Manor Cultivation During the feudal period, people lived in self-contained communities, producing their own food and clothing. A typical English manor used a three-field system of cultivation, with each section divided into individual strips. In this

system, the uses of the sections were rotated periodically, with one field resting, or lying fallow each time, so that the land did not become deficient in nutrients.

Horsedrawn Thresher Before the advent of industrial equipment, harvesting could be an enormous project, requiring several days of intense physical labour by both farmers and their livestock. Threshers and harvesters were originally powered by animals, with farmers walking beside or behind the animal to guide it through a field. A complicated array of leather straps distribute the weight of this thresher over a horses back.

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