About 9000 years ago, human beings invented farming. Since then, they have carefully selected the crops that give the best harvests under different conditions. Particularly in the last two hundred years, selective plant breeding has developed the characteristics that farmers and consumers require. Now that machines are used to pick most crops, and large stores prefer to package fruits and vegetables in regular sizes, many commercial varieties have been bred to produce even fruits that ripen together.
For most of history, humans have been hunter-gatherers. Adopting a more nomadic lifestyle, we moved with the changing seasons, with livestock migration patterns and adapted as climate change impacted crops and the surrounding environment. Today, we embrace technologies that our ancestors likely could never have dreamed of, but the incorporation of modern capabilities into agricultural practices took time and didn’t entirely abandon early advancements. In other words: our ability to grow and sustain life on a billboard didn’t come to us overnight.
The first true shift in agriculture came nearly 12,000 years ago at the start of the Neolithic Revolution (a.k.a. the Agricultural Revolution), which marked the first instances of a more permanent, settled lifestyle. Humans found a practical, long-term solution for food in the Fertile Crescent, an area located across what is now the Middle East, with ready access to major bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea. Humans began cultivating plants, domesticating such crops as wheat, barley, peas, and flax, and livestock, breeding domestic pigs from wild boars, goats from Persian ibex, and the sheep and cows commonly found on today’s farms.
For centuries, very little changed — a settled life with access to high-quality land and domesticated animals didn’t lend itself to transition. Then came the Middle Ages, a period marked by selective cross-breeding of plants and animals for optimal quality and a technique known as ridge and furrow farming, a plowing technique employing oxen (and later, horses) that inspired similar methods used today.
The development of crop rotation, or the growing and harvesting of different crops on the same land during different seasons, in the 16th century drove the modernization of farming practices, but it was the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century that really took humans from the past into the present. With crops that required fewer workers, better soil replenishment and improved livestock care, more people could work in urban industries as a result of agricultural productivity.
The 20th century introduced widespread use of machinery, fertilizer and pesticide technology, which coincided with huge population growth. As a result, food largely became an affordable and accessible commodity in developed countries.
Today, we find ourselves at yet another turning point in which we must balance sustainability and increased food production for the 9.6 billion people expected in the world by 2050. At Bayer, we strive to continually advance attach innovation to help tackle agricultural challenges such as these. Through digital farming, we’re leveraging improved data collection methods and GPS systems, and other innovative technologies like airborne photosynthesis sensors to drought resistant seeds.
Picture Credit : Google