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Origin Of Agriculture and Its Types
Archeological evidence for earliest record of agriculture is found in the fertile crescent region in and around Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, approximately about 12,000 years ago. The earlier Greek and Roman naturalists like Thophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny the elder and Galen laid down the scientifi foundation in understanding origin and domestication of cultivated plants.
Farming started in the predynastic period at the end of the Paleolithic, after 10,000 BC. Staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus. In India, wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated by 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats.
Scientists believe that agriculture was established first in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East about ten or eleven thousand years B.C.E. The region was home to a variety of edible and easily cultivated crops: wheat and barley among the cereal crops, and lentils, peas, and chickpeas among the vegetables.
Humans invented agriculture between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic era, or the New Stone Age. There were eight Neolithic crops: emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, hulled barley, chickpeas, and flax. The Neolithic era ended with the development of metal tools.
Types of Agriculture
- Nomadic Herding.
- Shifting Cultivation.
- Intensive Subsistence Agriculture.
- Commercial Dairy Farming.
- Commercial Grain Cultivation.
- Livestock Ranching.
- Mediterranean Agriculture.
- Mixed Farming.