Musings on Conservation Agriculture
Volume 1 - Issue 5
Samuel I Haruna*
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- School of Agriculture, Middle Tennessee State University, USA
*Corresponding author:
Samuel I Haruna, School of Agriculture, Middle Tennessee State University, USA
Received: March 27, 2018;; Published: April 09, 2018
DOI: 10.32474/CIACR.2018.01.000125
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Abstract
The dawn of the 21st century has witnessed an explosion in
the already increasing advances in technology and knowledge;
observation of the Higgs particle in the large Hadron collider,
determination of the age and size of the universe by the Hubble
telescope and the amount of transistors that can be placed on a
single chip, amongst others. Thus, it is very easy and convenient to
measure the advancement of the human race on these achievements
alone, ignoring other important aspects that equally contribute to
our survival: Agriculture. Homo sapiens sapiens was predominantly
hunter-gatherers during the first few hundred years. As time went
on, the mobile lifestyle of hunting, gathering and scavenging gave
way to a more sedentary one; agriculture. Since then, majority
of the human needs for food have been largely derived from
cultivating the field. We tinkered with agriculture and developed
tools, primitive as they might be, to improve crop production. We
used sticks to bore holes for seed incorporation. This led to the
development of the plow and later the heavy tillage equipment that
we are currently familiar with. We studied soil microorganisms
and can now use them to boost crop productivity. We are now able
to breed needed traits into cash crops to improve productivity on
less productive soils. All these efforts are also indicators of human
advancement.
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