Around ten to twelve thousand years ago, human began to domesticate plants and animals for food. Before this first agricultural revolution, people relied on hunting and gathering to obtain food supplies. While there are still groups of hunters and gatherers in the world, most societies have switched to agriculture. The beginnings of agriculture did not just occur in one place but appeared almost simultaneously around the world, possibly through trail and error with different plants and animals or by long term experimentation.
Between the first agricultural revolution thousands of years ago and the 17 century, agriculture remained pretty much the same. In the seventeenth century, a second agricultural revolution took place which increased efficiency of production as well as distribution which allowed more people to move to the cities as the industrial revolution got under way.
The eighteenth century's European colonies became sources of raw agricultural and mineral products for the industrializing nations. Now, many of the countries which were once colonies of Europe, especially those in Central America, are still heavily involved in the same types of agricultural production as they were hundreds of years ago. Farming in the twentieth century has become highly technological in more developed nations with geographical technologies like GIS, GPS and remote sensing while less developed nations continue with practices which are similar to those developed after the first agricultural revolution, thousands of years ago. |
