Search This Site

Custom Search

Thursday

Agroindustry Definition

ag·ro·in·dus·try (noun)

Definition:
1. agriculture 
Same as agribusiness
2. industry involving agricultural products: the operations and businesses that are associated with the industrial processing of agricultural products. or Industry dealing with the supply, processing and distribution of farm products

The Repost
READ MORE - Agroindustry Definition

Saturday

Value added Definition

In common days we oftenly heard value added word. This word oftenly using as a technical term used in economic. But in this part i will explained about Definition of Value Added in Agriculture terms.

Velue added means
The enhancement added to a product or service by a company before the product is offered to customers.
So it means creating a competitive advantage by bundling, combining, or packaging features and benefits that result in greater customer acceptance. By this step a raw material from field or all agricultural product will increase their price and give more benefits to the costumers.
READ MORE - Value added Definition

Monday

History of Agriculture

Talking about agroindustry in present days, we also talking about agriculture it self. Agriculture and farming activity is start almost a thousand years ago. Pinpointing the absolute beginnings of agriculture is problematic because the transition away from purely hunter-gatherer societies, in some areas, began many thousands of years before the invention of writing. Nonetheless, Archaeobotanists/Paleoethnobotanists have traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics, such as a semi-tough rachis and larger seeds, to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9,500 BC) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent.

Limited anthropological and archaeological evidence both indicate a grain-grinding culture farming along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC using the world's earliest known type of sickle blades. There is even earlier evidence for conscious cultivation and seasonal harvest: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. By 8000 BC, farming was in practice in Anatolia.

By 7000 BC it reached Mesopotamia, by 6000 BC the Nile River, and by 5000 BC, it had spread to India. Around the same time, agriculture was developed independently in China. Maize was first domesticated from teosinte in the Americas around 3000-2700 BC. In these contexts lie the origins of the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture: first emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in this region, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale.
Ancient Egyptia Farmer

There are many sites that date to between ca. 8,500 BC and 7,500 BC where the systematic farming of these crops contributed the major part of the inhabitants' diet. From the Fertile Crescent agriculture spread eastwards to Central Asia and westwards into Cyprus, Anatolia and, by 7,000 BC, Greece. Farming, principally of emmer and einkorn, reached northwestern Europe via southeastern and central Europe by ca. 4,800 BC (see, among others, Price, D. [ed.] 2000. Europe's First Farmers. Cambridge University Press; Harris, D. [ed.] 1996 The Origins and Spread of Agriculture in Eurasia. UCL Press).

The reasons for the earliest introduction of farming may have included climate change, but possibly there were also social reasons (e.g. accumulation of food surplus for competitive gift-giving). Most certainly there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies after a lengthy period when some crops were deliberately planted and other foods were gathered from the wild. Although localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant, the fact that farming was 'invented' at least three times, possibly more, suggests that social reasons may have been instrumental.

Full dependency on domestic crops and animals did not occur until the Bronze Age, by which time wild resources contributed a nutritionally insignificant component to the diet. If the operative definition of agriculture includes large scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and use of a specialized labour force, the title "inventors of agriculture" would fall to the Sumerians, starting ca. 5,500 BC. Intensive farming allows a much greater density of population than can be supported by hunting and gathering and allows for the accumulation of excess product to keep for winter use or to sell for profit. The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies. The agriculturalism of the Sumerians allowed them to embark on an unprecedented territorial expansion, making them the first empire builders. Not long after, the Egyptians, powered by effective farming of the Nile valley, achieved a population density from which enough warriors could be drawn for a territorial expansion more than tripling the Sumerian empire in area.

Agriculture in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages owe much of its development to the advances made by the Muslims. As early as the ninth century, a modern agricultural system became central to economic life and organization in the Muslim land. The great cities of the Near East, North Africa and Spain, Artz explains, were supported by an elaborate agricultural system that included extensive irrigation and an expert knowledge of the most advanced agricultural methods in the world. The Muslims introduced of what was to become an agricultural revolution based on four key areas:

• Development of a sophisticated system of Irrigation using machines such as Norias, newly invented water raising machines, dams and reservoirs. With such technology they managed to greatly expand the exploitable land area.

• The adoption of a scientific approach to farming enabled them to improve farming techniques derived from the collection and collation of relevant information throughout the whole of the known world. Farming manuals were produced in every corner of the Muslim world detailing where, when and how to plant and grow various crops. Advanced scientific techniques allowed people like Ibn al-Baytar to challenge the elements by growing plants, thousands of miles from their origins that could never have been imagined to grow in a semi-arid or arid climate. The introduction and acclimatization of new crops and breeds and strains of livestock into areas where they were previously unknown.

• Incentives based on new approach to land ownership and labourers' rights, combining the recognition of private ownership and the rewarding of cultivators with a harvest share commensurate with their efforts.

• The introduction of new and a variety of crops transforming private farming into a new global industry exported everywhere including Europe. Spain received (apart from a legendary high culture), and what she in turn transmitted to most Europe, all manner of agricultural and fruit-growing processes, together with a vast number of new plants, fruit and vegetables that we all now take for granted. These new crops included sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, cotton, artichokes, aubergines, saffron... Others, previously known, were developed further. Muslims also brought to that country lemons, oranges, cotton, almonds, figs and sub-tropical crops such as bananas and sugar cane were grown on the coastal parts of the country, many to be taken later to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Also owing to the Muslim influence, a silk industry flourished, flax was cultivated and linen exported, and esparto grass, which grew wild in the more arid parts, was collected and turned into various types of articles.

Late Middle Ages
The invention of a three field system of crop rotation during the Middle Ages vastly improved agricultural efficiency. After 1492 the world's agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange. Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa. Perhaps most notably, the tomato became a favorite in European cuisine, with maize and the potato widely grown, while certain wheat strains quickly took to western hemisphere soils and became a dietary staple even for native North, Central and South Americans.

By the early 1800s agricultural practices, particularly careful selection of hardy strains and cultivars, had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages and before, especially in the largely virgin lands of North and South America. With the rapid rise of mechanization in the 20th century, especially in the form of the tractor, the demanding tasks of sowing, harvesting and threshing could be performed with a speed and on a scale barely imaginable before. These advances have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United States, Argentina, Israel, Germany and a few other nations to output volumes of high quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit.
READ MORE - History of Agriculture

Thursday

Why Organic Farming Hard to Apply?

All aspects of organic farming and organic food are under debate. Environmentalists, food safety advocates, various consumer protection, social justice and labor groups, small independent farmers, and a growing number of food consumers are ranged against agribusiness and current government agricultural policies.

The controversy centers on the overall value and safety of chemical agriculture, with organic farming popularly regarded as the "opposite" of modern, large-scale, chemical-based, vertically integrated, corporate food production. As public awareness increases, there are a number of obstacles to an easy grasp of the overall situation.

In recent decades, food production has moved out of the public eye. In developed nations, where most of the world's wealth, consumption, and agricultural policy-making are centered, many are unaware of how their food is produced, or even that food, like energy, is not unlimited. If the methods used to produce food are rapidly destroying the capacity for continued production, then sustainable, organic farming is as crucial a topic as renewable energy and pollution control. This proposition is at the center of most organic farming issues.

It is useful to make a distinction between organic farming and organic food. Whether organic food is tastier, safer or more nutritious has little to do with the effects of chemical agriculture on the environment. In any case, most food dollars are spent on processed food products, the manufacture of which is beyond the scope of farming. There are separate food and farming issues and lumping the two together only confuses the discussion.

The distinction between organic farming and organic certification is also important. Defining organic farming with checklists of acceptable and prohibited inputs and practices elicits similar criticisms as those leveled at chemical farming. With rules come exceptions, whether well-intentioned or purely profit-oriented, and critics hold that this can only undermine organic principles. What is "more-or-less organic"? Certification also allows agribusiness to lobby for favorable definitions—anything that can be approved becomes "organic".

Of course, the issues, particularly the social ones, will shift if agribusiness fully adapts to and dominates organic farming, and (in early 2005) this is the current trend. Then, large-scale, certified organic farms would probably operate much more like conventional farms do today. Environmental benefits may accrue from a change in types of pesticides and fertilizer used, more crop diversity, and the like, but if the overall agribusiness philosophy remains essentially unchanged, "organic farming" could become the norm, without any great environmental or social improvements.

The following topics may be argued from both sides.
READ MORE - Why Organic Farming Hard to Apply?

Sunday

Tips to Help Our Environtment Sustainability

We as a citizens have a responsibilty. A responsible citizens need to put in some efforts to do our bit at the grass root level. This can be easily done by inculcating some simple ways to help the environment in our day to day life. Though the efforts might look insignificant when seen individually, together they can have a strong impact on the environment. Bellow are The following tips for ways to help our Environtment :

Ways to Help the Environment at Home
What better place to initiate your efforts to save environment than at home? You can contribute your bit to save the planet by following some of the most simple steps. Reduce, reuse and recycle is by far the best motto when it comes to saving environment. Most of the things we use today, are derived from non renewable sources which are bound to get over some day. We can save them only by reducing their use, using them to their potential and recycling them, if possible. These things include fossil fuels, paper, water etc. Another important step towards helping the environment would be using less electricity. This can be done by switching off the various products, which work on electricity, when not in use. Lowering the temperature of your thermostat, replacing incandescent light bulb with a CFL, using less hot water, switching to bicycle when possible. This simple yet effective ways can yield positive results when practiced by the whole world. Read more on sustainable living ideas.

Ways to Help the Environment at School
They say that kids of today, are the future of tomorrow, and hence inculcating, at the young age, the need of working towards saving the environment is bound to make them responsible citizens of tomorrow. Though, their efforts, in the beginning, would be small, they will turn out to be helpful when taken as a whole, in the long term. Kids can help by planting trees, not wasting paper, making sure that they use water properly, not wasting electricity and spreading awareness about these simple ways to save the environment in their neighborhood. Planting trees can help in bringing about the much needed stability in the environment, while not wasting resources will make sure that we will use them efficiently. Inculcating these easy ways, in kids at a tender age, to help the environment will make them realize the seriousness of the issue more efficiently.

Ways to Help the Environment from Global Warming
One of the biggest hazard lurking for the planet Earth is that of global warming. Though the debate about global warming effects on Earth continues, we can start making some simple efforts, so that, we don't repent if the calamity finally descends on us tomorrow. Human induced global warming is basically caused due to a range of human activities, including use of fossil fuels to deforestation. Though the problems may sound to be quite devastating it doesn't necessarily mean that you as an individual can't do anything about it. The simple efforts though which you can contribute to save the environment include, walking or cycling instead of using a vehicle, taking shower for a less period, using less electricity, planting trees, switching to alternative fuels which are environment friendly etc. This will not just help in curbing global warming, but will also help in curbing several other environmental issues, including air and water pollution.
READ MORE - Tips to Help Our Environtment Sustainability