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A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner (landowner), while employees of the farm are known as farm workers. However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals by labor and attention.
Organic farming, also known as organic agriculture or ecological farming or biological farming, is an agricultural system that emphasizes the use of naturally occurring, non-synthetic inputs such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation, companion planting, and mixed cropping. Biological pest control methods such as the fostering of insect predators are also encouraged. Organic agriculture can be defined as "an integrated farming system that strives for sustainability, the enhancement of soil fertility and biological diversity while, with rare exceptions, prohibiting synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, and growth hormones". It originated early in the 20th century in reaction to rapidly changing farming practices. Certified organic agriculture today accounts for 70 million hectares globally, with over half of that total in Australia.
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business processes and farming practices. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change, water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without causing damage to human or natural systems. It involves preventing adverse effects on soil, water, biodiversity, and surrounding or downstream resources, as well as to those working or living on the farm or in neighboring areas. Elements of sustainable agriculture can include permaculture, agroforestry, mixed farming, multiple cropping, and crop rotation.
Local food is food that is produced within a short distance of where it is consumed, often accompanied by a social structure and supply chain different from the large-scale supermarket system.
Community-supported agriculture or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.
A farmers' market is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or outdoors and typically consist of booths, tables or stands where farmers sell their produce, live animals and plants, and sometimes prepared foods and beverages. Farmers' markets exist in many countries worldwide and reflect the local culture and economy. The size of the market may be just a few stalls or it may be as large as several city blocks. Due to their nature, they tend to be less rigidly regulated than retail produce shops.
The organic movement broadly refers to the organizations and individuals involved worldwide in the promotion of organic food and other organic products. It started during the first half of the 20th century, when modern large-scale agricultural practices began to appear.
Organic certification is a certification process for producers of organic food and other organic agricultural products. In general, any business directly involved in food production can be certified, including seed suppliers, farmers, food processors, retailers and restaurants. A lesser known counterpart is certification for organic textiles that includes certification of textile products made from organically grown fibres.
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under 0.40 hectares to some hectares, or sometimes in greenhouses, distinguishes it from other types of farming. A market garden is sometimes called a truck farm in the US.
Pesticide residue refers to the pesticides that may remain on or in food, after they are applied to food crops. The maximum allowable levels of these residues in foods are stipulated by regulatory bodies in many countries. Regulations such as pre-harvest intervals also prevent harvest of crop or livestock products if recently treated in order to allow residue concentrations to decrease over time to safe levels before harvest.
Traditional farming was the original type of agriculture, and has been practiced for thousands of years. All traditional farming is now considered to be "organic farming" although at the time there were no known inorganic methods. For example, forest gardening, a fully organic food production system which dates from prehistoric times, is thought to be the world's oldest and most resilient agroecosystem. The industrial revolution introduced inorganic methods, most of which were not well developed and had serious side effects. An organic movement began in the 1940s as a reaction to agriculture's growing reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The history of this modern revival of organic farming dates back to the first half of the 20th century at a time when there was a growing reliance on these new synthetic, non-organic methods.
Équiterre is a Canadian non-profit and non-governmental organization, operating in Quebec. It manages a community-supported agriculture system of farms and consumers, including households and institutions.
Industrial agriculture is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of crops and animals and animal products like eggs or milk. The methods of industrial agriculture include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade. These methods are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced in this way.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) primarily produces rice, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed, corn and soybeans.
Organic farming is practiced around the globe, but the markets for sale are strongest in North America and Europe, while the greatest dedicated area is accounted for by Australia, the greatest number of producers are in India, and the Falkland Islands record the highest share of agricultural land dedicated to organic production.
Organic food, ecological food, or biological food are foods and drinks produced by methods complying with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Organizations regulating organic products may restrict the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers in the farming methods used to produce such products. Organic foods are typically not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives.
Development-supported agriculture is a nascent movement in real estate development that preserves and invests in agricultural land use. As farmland is lost due to the challenging economics of farming and the pressures of the real estate industry, DSA attempts to reconcile the need for development with the need to preserve agricultural land. The overall goal of DSA is to incubate small-scale organic farms that co-exist with residential land development, providing benefits to farmers, residents, the local community, and the environment.
The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps.
The Student Sustainable Farm at Rutgers is located at Rutgers' Horticultural Research Station in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on the G. H. Cook campus of Rutgers University.
Women in agriculture in China make up a diverse group of women who support agricultural activities in their country. Because China is a large country, rural women should not be considered a monolithic group, but instead have different strategies for success based on group or family relationships.
References
- ↑ Yu, Katrina. "Meet the woman leading China's new organic farming army". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
- ↑ "Shi Yan and Her "Little Donkey" Green Farm - All China Women's Federation". www.womenofchina.cn. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
- 1 2 "How Community Supported Agriculture Sprouted In China". NPR.org. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 "Shared harvest and China's CSA alliance". Global Cities. 3 October 2017. Retrieved 2017-12-30.