Agriculture
practice of cultivating plants and raising animals to produce food, fiber, fuel, and other products; one of humanity's oldest and most widespread activities, forming the foundation of most human civilizations
Agriculture is the practice of cultivating the soil, planting, raising, and harvesting both food and non-food crops, as well as livestock production. Broader definitions also include forestry and aquaculture. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated plants and animals created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.
As of 2021, small farms, of which the vast majority are one hectare (about 2.5 acres) or smaller, produce about one-third of the world's food. Moreover, five of every six farms in the world consist of fewer than 2 hectares (4.9 acres) and take up only around 12% of all agricultural land. In terms of total land use, large farms are dominant.
The public source identifies “Agriculture” as practice of cultivating plants and raising animals to produce food, fiber, fuel, and other products; one of humanity's oldest and most widespread activities, forming the foundation of most human civilizations. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Agriculture, practice and cultivating.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Agriculture”, the useful work is to connect “practice of cultivating plants and raising animals to produce food, fiber, fuel, and other products; one of humanity's oldest and most widespread activities, forming the foundation of most human civilizations” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11451. The Library of Congress control number is sh85002415. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Agriculture”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Agriculture primary sources, Agriculture archive and Agriculture research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Agriculture” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.