Agriculture

Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel,drugs and other products used to sustain and enhance human life.[1] Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. However, all farming generally relies on techniques to expand and maintain the lands that are suitable for raising domesticated species. For plants, this usually requires some form ofirrigation, although there are methods of dryland farming; pastoral herding on rangeland is still the most common means of raising livestock. In the developed world, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture has become the dominant system of modern farming, although there is growing support for sustainable agriculture (e.g. permaculture or organic agriculture).
Until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the human population labored in agriculture. Pre-industrial agriculture was typicallysubsistence agriculture in which farmers raised most of their crops for their own consumption instead of for trade. A remarkable shift in agricultural practices has occurred over the past century in response to new technologies, and the development of world markets. This also led to technological improvements in agricultural techniques, such as the Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitratewhich made the traditional practice of recycling nutrients with crop rotation and animal manure less necessary.

Historical Development of Crop Production
Early man lived on wild game, leaves, roots, seeds, berries, and fruits.
As the population increased, the food supply was not always sufficiently stable or plentiful to supply his needs. This probably led to the practice of crop production. Therefore, crop production began at least nine thousand (9000) years ago when domestication of plants became essential to supplement natural supplies in certain localities. The art of crop production is older than civilization, and its essential features have remained almost unchanged since the dawn of history. These features are: 1. Gathering and preservation of seeds of the desired crop plants
2. Destroying other kinds of vegetation growing on the land
3. Stirring the soil to form a seedbed
4. Planting when the season and weather are right as shown by past experience 5. Destroying weeds
6. Protecting the crop from natural enemies
7. Gathering, processing and storing the product

Origin of Cultivated Crops
All cultivated plants were domesticated from their wild species.
However, the exact time and place of origin and the true ancestry of many crops are still as highly speculative as the origin of man. Man has domesticated some crop species that met his needs before the dawn of recorded history. Most of the domesticated crops were introduced into new areas far from their centre of origin by migrating human populations in prehistoric as well as in recorded times. As a result, both indigenous and introduced crops are grown everywhere in the world.

Bikolandia - Rice, corn, coconut, abaca, rootcrops, copra, and banana

CLASSIFICATION OF CROPS
A new crop classification, the Indicative Crop Classification (ICC) has been developed for the 2010 round of agricultural censuses, and is given at the end of this appendix.
The crop classification used in the 2000 agricultural census programme reflected various elements related to crops, including the growing cycle (temporary/permanent), crop species, crop variety (for example, hybrid/ordinary maize), season (for example, winter/spring wheat), land type (for example, wetland/dryland rice), crop use (for example, pumpkin for food/fodder), type of product (for example, fresh/dried beans), how the crop is processed (for example, industrial crops), and cultivation methods
(for example, crops grown under protective cover).
ICC has been developed based on the Central Product Classification (CPC) (UN, 2004a). CPC classifies goods and services into categories based on the nature of the product and industry of origin. Crop products are classified mainly according to the type of crop. CPC itself is based on the Harmonized
Commodity Description and Coding System (HS), a classification of the World Customs Organization.
CPC is also broadly compatible with ISIC, in that the industry of origin is related to ISIC. ICC is also consistent with the classification of commodities used in FAO’s on-line database, FAOSTAT.
From a statistical point of view, the crop classification should be closely related to the product classification, and to some extent to the economic activity classification (ISIC). The crop classification refers to which crops are grown, whereas the product classification refers to the product(s) generated from that crop. Thus, “mustard” is an oilseed crop, whereas “mustard seed” is the oilseed product. There is not always a one-to-one correspondence between a crop and a product. The same crop may yield two products – for example, cotton may yield cotton fibre and cotton seed.

Philippines - Crop production index
Crop production index (2004-2006 = 100)
The latest value for Crop production index (2004-2006 = 100) in Philippines was 111.00 as of 2009. Over the past 48 years, the value for this indicator has fluctuated between 113.00 in 2008 and 29.00 in 1961.
Definition: Crop production index shows agricultural production for each year relative to the base period 2004-2006. It includes all crops except fodder crops. Regional and income group aggregates for the FAO's production indexes are calculated from the underlying values in international dollars, normalized to the base period 2004-2006.