Developing nations, which may rely more heavily on agriculture in their economy than developed nations, argue that the US should reduce its agriculture subsidies. The subsidies make US agricultural products artificially cheap, too cheap for developing nations to compete with. US agricultural subsidies have had a large impact on international trade flows. The politics and economics of agriculture are also relevant issues on the global scale. This is largely a result of technological progress greatly reducing the need for human labor in the production of agricultural goods, weighting the costs more heavily on the human resources side of the equation. Interesting trends in the agricultural market pertain to the decrease in cost for the actual farming aspects and an increase in costs for the distribution and sales system (particularly in the U.S.). This represents a large interconnected supply chain on a global scale. Agricultural economics is defined as the economic system that produces, distributes, and consumes agricultural products and services. Basic macro and micro-economic principles apply to farming, as do the existence of externalities such as climate change and nutritional health. This rapid expansion coupled with the essential role of food in our society has generated a field of economics solely dedicated to observing and predicting trends within the agriculture market landscape. The modern era of farming is increasingly defined by selective breeding, crop rotation, economies of scale, electronic machinery, genetic modification, pesticides, and a host of other solutions that have rapidly expanded the overall potential capacity in farming. Human Population Growth: This chart illustrates the way in which human population growth evolved over time, underlining the difficulty in maintaining supplies to fill the needs of such a large population. Indeed, until the Industrial Revolution (18th and 19th centuries) the vast majority of the human population labored long hard days to generate enough food to feed the masses. This evolved further in the middle ages with the advent of fertilizers, three field techniques, draft horses, and improved international exchange. This began with agricultural improvements such as the hoe and the plow (2500 B.C.), irrigation via canals, and biological pest control as early as the bronze and iron ages. cattle, sheep, goats, pigs), growing of wheat and barley in Jordan Valley and the growth of cereal in Syria (all still about 10,000 years ago).Īs population expanded dramatically over time (see ), so did the efficiency of agriculture economics. This evolved in the Fertile Crescent region into the domestication of animals (i.e. Over 10,000 years ago, tribes began executing forest gardening. The history of agriculture is complex, spanning back thousands of years across a wide variety of different geographic regions, climates, cultures, and technological approaches.
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