EMS-Agriculture and the environment, page no 61

Agriculture describes the practice of growing crops or raising animals. Someone who works as a farmer is in the agriculture industry. The Latin root of agriculture is Agri, or "field," plus cultura, "cultivation." Cultivating a piece of land, or planting and growing food plants on it, is largely what agriculture means.

4 types of agriculture:

• Pastoralism:

  Pastoralism is a mode of subsistence that involves raising domestic animals on natural pastures, a livelihood practice mainly pursued in dry grassland environments that support few competing forms of land use. Pastoralism requires herd and household mobility as herders continually seek fresh grazing.

• Shifting cultivation: Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which areas of land are deforested and used for a short time. Shifting cultivation is also known as slash and burn agriculture. Shifting cultivation is practised in the thickly forested areas of Amazon basin, tropical Africa, parts of southeast Asia and northeast India.

• Subsistence Farming: Subsistence farming, form of farming in which nearly all of the crops or livestock raised are used to maintain the farmer and the farmer's family, leaving little, if any, surplus for sale or trade.

• Intensive Farming: The agricultural intensification and mechanization system that is based on maximizing the yields from available land through heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers is intensive farming.

  
  

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