Farming...?

Question

What Inventions Have Changed The Nature Of Farming And How Did They Come About...??

Thanks =]

Answer 1

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STANDARD 2.1

The student will explain how the contributions of ancient China and Egypt have influenced the present world in terms of architecture, inventions, the calendar, and written language.  

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

Ancient people made contributions that affect the present world.



What contributions did the people of ancient China and Egypt make to the development of written language?

What inventions came from ancient China and Egypt?

What examples of architecture from ancient China and Egypt are still present today?



Terms to know

• Ancient: Long, long ago

• Architecture: The design of buildings

• Contribution: The act of giving or doing something

          

               Contributions of Ancient China and Egypt



       China               Egypt

Written Language   Characters, symbols Hieroglyphics



Inventions Kite Paper made from Silk cloth    papyrus  

Compass 365-day calendar

Bronze Clock

Fireworks

Architecture Great Wall                     Pyramids

Many inventions of ancient China and Egypt are still used today.



Locate and use information from print and non-print sources.

Gather, classify, and interpret information.

Use resource materials.

Collect, organize, and record information.



STANDARD 2.2

The student will compare the lives and contributions of American Indians (First Americans), with emphasis on the Powhatan of the Eastern Woodlands, the Sioux of the Plains, and the Pueblo people of the Southwest.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

Many American Indian (First American) tribes lived in Virginia and in other regions of America.

American Indians (First Americans) met their basic needs in different ways.

American Indians (First Americans) have made contributions to present-day life.

In what ways were the American Indians (First Americans) in Virginia like and different from the Sioux and Pueblo Indians?

Who are some of the American Indians (First Americans) who lived in Virginia and in other regions of the United States?

What are some contributions of the American Indians (First Americans)?

Terms to know

• Regions: Places that have common (the same) characteristics

  Region Indians    Homes Occupations Transportation

Eastern Powhatan Wood and Fishermen Walked

Woodlands bark houses Hunters Paddled canoes

Farmers



    

Plains Sioux Teepees Hunters Walked

Horsemen Used horses

Warriors



Southwest Pueblo Multi-story Farmers W...

terraced

buildings



Contributions of American Indians (First Americans)

• Arts (jewelry, pottery, weaving)

• Legends and stories

• Respect for nature

• Farming

Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas.

Gather, classify, and interpret information.

Construct and explain simple charts.

Collect, organize, and record information.



STANDARD 2.3

The student will identify and compare changes in community life over time in terms of buildings, jobs, transportation, and population.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

Communities change over time for a variety of reasons.

How and why have communities changed over time?



Terms to know

• Community: A place where people live, work, and play

• Population: The number of people living in a community  

• Transportation: A way of moving people and things from one place to another

The way people live today is different from the way people lived long ago.

New inventions have led to changes in buildings, jobs, transportation, and populations of communities over time.

Make  and explain graphs.

Compare and contrast information.

Gather, classify, and interpret information.

STANDARD 2.4

The student will develop map skills by

a) locating China and Egypt on world maps;

b) locating the regions of the Powhatan, Sioux, and Pueblo Indians on United States maps;

c) comparing the climate, land, and plant life of these regions;

d) describing how people in these regions adapt to their environment.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

People adapt to their environment in different ways.

Where are China and Egypt located on a world map?

Where are the regions of the Powhatan, Sioux, and Pueblo people located on a United States map?

How are the climates, land, and plant life of these regions similar and different?

How did the ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Powhatan, Sioux, and Pueblo people adapt to their environments?



Terms to know

• Climate: The kind of weather an area has over a long period of      time

• Land: The shape of the land’s surface

• Environment: Surroundings

China is located in Asia. Egypt is located in Africa.

  

                    Climate Land Plant Life

China Seasons Forests Great variety

Hills, mountains of plant life

Deserts

Egypt Hot, dry Nile River Grasses along Deserts the Nile River Flooding

Eastern Mild winters Rivers Forests

Woodlands Hot, humid Hills, mountains Variety of

(Powhatan) summers Coastland plant life



Plains Hot summers Plains Grasses

(Sioux) Harsh, cold Prairies

winters Rolling hills

Southwest Hot days High flatlands Cactus

(Pueblo) Cold nights

Little rainfall



Locate regions on maps and globes.

Locate and use information from print and non-print sources.

Use resource materials.

Collect, organize, and record information.

Gather, classify, and interpret information.



STANDARD 2.4 (continued)

The student will develop map skills by

a) locating China and Egypt on world maps;

b) locating the regions of the Powhatan, Sioux, and Pueblo Indians on United States maps;

c) comparing the climate, land, and plant life of these regions;

d) describing how people in these regions adapt to their environment.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills





Ways people adapted to their environment

• The ancient Chinese fished, farmed, and irrigated the land.  

• The ancient Egyptians farmed and irrigated the land near the Nile River.

• The Powhatans farmed, fished, hunted, used trees for homes and canoes, and gathered plants for food.

• The Sioux moved around the region to hunt for buffalo. They used horses for transportation.

• The Pueblo farmed the land. They lived in villages in adobe (clay) houses.



STANDARD 2.5

The student will develop map skills by

a) locating the equator, the seven continents, and the four oceans on maps and globes;

b) locating selected rivers (James River, Mississippi River, Rio Grande), mountain ranges (Appalachian Mountains and Rocky Mountains), and lakes (Great Lakes) in the United States.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

Maps can be used to locate land and water features.

Maps and globes help people study the Earth.

Where are the seven continents, the four oceans, and the equator located on maps and globes?

Where are these major rivers, lakes, and mountain ranges located on a map of the United States?

Terms to know

• Equator: An imaginary line around the middle of the Earth

• Continent: A large body of land on the Earth

The seven continents

Locate North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica on maps and globes.

The four oceans

Locate the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean on maps and globes.

Selected rivers, mountain ranges, and lakes

Locate the James River, the Mississippi River, the Rio Grande, the Appalachian Mountains, the Rocky Mountains, and the general area of the Great Lakes on a United States map.

Locate areas (regions) on maps and globes.  



STANDARD 2.6

The student will demonstrate map skills by constructing simple maps, using title, map legend, and compass rose.

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

People who make maps include a title, map legend, and compass rose.

A map is a drawing that shows what places look like from above and where they are located.

A map legend includes symbols that represent objects and places.



What is included when making a map?



Maps include the following:

• Title—The name or kind of map

• Map legend—A list of shapes and symbols used on a map and an explanation of what each stands for

• Compass rose—A symbol that shows direction (north, east, south, and west) on a map

Use a map legend.

Draw maps of familiar areas.

Make and use simple map symbols.

Use a compass rose to identify directions.



STANDARD 2.7

The student will describe the differences between natural resources (water, soil, wood, and coal), human resources (people at work), and capital resources (machines, tools, and buildings).

Essential Understandings Essential Questions Essential Knowledge Essential Skills

The three main types of resources are natural, human, and capital.



What are natural, human, and capital resources?

Terms to know

• Natural resources: Materials that come from nature

• Human resources: People working to produce goods and services

• Capital resources: Goods made by people and used to produce other goods and services

Examples of resources

• Natural: Water, soil, wood, coal

• Human: Farmers, miners, builders, painters

• Capital: Hammers, computers, trucks, lawn mowers, factory buildings

Gather, classify, and interpret information.

STANDARD 2.8

The student will distinguish between the use of barter and money in the exchange for goods and services.

Answer 2

Gee this doesn't sound like a homework question LOL! Goodluck. Make sure you double check the answers you get!

Answer 3

1. Case-hardened steel plowshares in the 1860s allowed tough prairie dirt to be turned and hastened westward expansion into OK, NE and plains states.

2. Cotton gin in 1792, made the processing of vast expanses of cotton feasible, necessitating a greater workforce :( and making cotton a major crop on America

3. basic mechanization of farming- tractors (steam first, diesel)

Answer 4

Due to Industrialization the style of farming has completely changed. Contract farming has come in to existence.

Modern Agriculture: Ecological impacts and the possibilities for truly sustainable farming

Miguel A. Altieri

Division of Insect Biology

University of California, Berkeley

Until about four decades ago, crop yields in agricultural systems depended on internal resources, recycling of organic matter, built-in biological control mechanisms and rainfall patterns. Agricultural yields were modest, but stable. Production was safeguarded by growing more than one crop or variety in space and time in a field as insurance against pest outbreaks or severe weather. Inputs of nitrogen were gained by rotating major field crops with legumes. In turn rotations suppressed insects, weeds and diseases by effectively breaking the life cycles of these pests. A typical corn belt farmer grew corn rotated with several crops including soybeans, and small grain production was intrinsic to maintain livestock. Most of the labor was done by the family with occasional hired help and no specialized equipment or services were purchased from off-farm sources. In these type of farming systems the link between agriculture and ecology was quite strong and signs of environmental degradation were seldom evident (1) .

But as agricultural modernization progressed, the ecology-farming linkage was often broken as ecological principles were ignored and/or overridden. In fact, several agricultural scientists have arrived at a general consensus that modern agriculture confronts an environmental crisis. A growing number of people have become concerned about the long-term sustainability of existing food production systems. Evidence has accumulated showing that whereas the present capital- and technology-intensive farming systems have been extremely productive and competitive, they also bring a variety of economic, environmental and social problems (2) .

Evidence also shows that the very nature of the agricultural structure and prevailing policies have led to this environmental crisis by favoring large farm size, specialized production, crop monocultures and mechanization. Today as more and more farmers are integrated into international economies, imperatives to diversity disappear and monocultures are rewarded by economies of scale. In turn, lack of rotations and diversification take away key self-regulating mechanisms, turning monocultures into highly vulnerable agroecosystems dependent on high chemical inputs.

The expansion of monocultures

Today monocultures have increased dramatically worldwide, mainly through the geographical expansion of land devoted to single crops and year-to-year production of the same crop species on the same land. Available data indicate that the amount of crop diversity per unit of arable land has decreased and that croplands have shown a tendency toward concentration. There are political and economic forces influencing the trend to devote large areas to monoculture, and in fact such systems are rewarded by economies of scale and contribute significantly to the ability of national agricultures to serve international markets.

The technologies allowing the shift toward monoculture were mechanization, the improvement of crop varieties, and the development of agrochemicals to fertilize crops and control weeds and pests. Government commodity policies these past several decades encouraged the acceptance and utilization of these technologies. As a result, farms today are fewer, larger, more specialized and more capital intensive. At the regional level, increases in monoculture farming meant that the whole agricultural support infrastructure (i.e. research, extension, suppliers, storage, transport, markets, etc.) has become more specialized.

From an ecological perspective, the regional consequences of monoculture specialization are many-fold:

   1. Most large-scale agricultural systems exhibit a poorly structured assemblage of farm components, with almost no linkages or complementary relationships between crop enterprises and among soils, crops and animals.

   2. Cycles of nutrients, energy, water and wastes have become more open, rather than closed as in a natural ecosystem. Despite the substantial amount of crop residues and manure produced in farms, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recycle nutrients, even within agricultural systems. Animal wastes cannot economically be returned to the land in a nutrient-recycling process because production systems are geographically remote from other systems which would complete the cycle. In many areas, agricultural waste has become a liability rather than a resource. Recycling of nutrients from urban centers back to the fields is similarly difficult.

   3. Part of the instability and susceptibility to pests of agroecosystems can be linked to the adoption of vast crop monocultures, which have concentrated resources for specialist crop herbivores and have increased the areas available for immigration of pests. This simplification has also reduced environmental opportunities for natural enemies. Consequently, pest outbreaks often occur when large numbers of immigrant pests, inhibited populations of beneficial insects, favorable weather and vulnerable crop stages happen simultaneously.

   4. As specific crops are expanded beyond their "natural" ranges or favorable regions to areas of high pest potential, or with limited water, or low-fertility soils, intensified chemical controls are required to overcome such limiting factors. The assumption is that the human intervention and level of energy inputs that allow these expansions can be sustained indefinitely.

   5. Commercial farmers witness a constant parade of new crop varieties as varietal replacement due to biotic stresses and market changes has accelerated to unprecedented levels. A cultivar with improved disease or insect resistance makes a debut, performs well for a few years (typically 5-9 years) and is then succeeded by another variety when yields begin to slip, productivity is threatened, or a more promising cultivar becomes available. A variety’s trajectory is characterized by a take-off phase when it is adopted by farmers, a middle stage when the planted area stabilizes and finally a retraction of its acreage. Thus, stability in modern agriculture hinges on a continuous supply of new cultivars rather than a patchwork quilt of many different varieties planted on the same farm.

   6. The need to subsidize monocultures requires increases in the use of pesticides and fertilizers, but the efficiency of use of applied inputs is decreasing and crop yields in most key crops are leveling off. In some places, yields are actually in decline. There are different opinions as to the underlying causes of this phenomenon. Some believe that yields are leveling off because the maximum yield potential of current varieties is being approached, and therefore genetic engineering must be applied to the task of redesigning crop. Agroecologists, on the other hand, believe that the leveling off is because of the steady erosion of the productive base of agriculture through unsustainable practices (3).

The first wave of environmental problems

The specialization of production units has led to the image that agriculture is a modern miracle of food production. Evidence indicates, however, that excessive reliance on monoculture farming and agroindustrial inputs, such as capital-intensive technology, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, has negatively impacted the environment and rural society. Most agriculturalists had assumed that the agroecosystem/natural ecosystem dichotomy need not lead to undesirable consequences, yet, unfortunately, a number of "ecological diseases" have been associated with the intensification of food production. They may be grouped into two categories: diseases of the ecotope, which include erosion, loss of soil fertility, depletion of nutrient reserves, salinization and alkalinization, pollution of water systems, loss of fertile croplands to urban development, and diseases of the biocoenosis, which include loss of crop, wild plant, and animal genetic resources, elimination of natural enemies, pest resurgence and genetic resistance to pesticides, chemical contamination, and destruction of natural control mechanisms. Under conditions of intensive management, treatment of such "diseases" requires an increase in the external costs to the extent that, in some agricultural systems, the amount of energy invested to produce a desired yield surpasses the energy harvested (4).

The loss of yields due to pests in many crops (reaching about 20-30% in most crops), despite the substantial increase in the use of pesticides (about 500 million kg of active ingredient worldwide) is a symptom of the environmental crisis affecting agriculture. It is well known that cultivated plants grown in genetically homogenous monocultures do not possess the necessary ecological defense mechanisms to tolerate the impact of outbreaking pest populations. Modern agriculturists have selected crops for high yields and high palatability, making them more susceptible to pests by sacrificing natural resistance for productivity. On the other hand, modern agricultural practices negatively affect pest natural enemies, which in turn do not find the necessary environmental resources and opportunities in monocultures to effectively and biologically suppress pests. Due to this lack of natural controls, an investment of about 40 billion dollars in pesticide control is incurred yearly by US farmers, which is estimated to save approximately $16 billion in US crops. However, the indirect costs of pesticide use to the environment and public health have to be balanced against these benefits. Based on the available data, the environmental (impacts on wildlife, pollinators, natural enemies, fisheries, water and  

Answer 5

EVERY invention relating to agriculture has changed the nature of farming one way or another.  Some in good ways, others in bad way....some were a bit of both.

The ideas came up, because people had a bright idea.  

First there was a stick, used to hook wild fruit and nuts down, or help dig up wild roots.  Someone along the way noticed that the discarded seeds sprouted, and MORE FOOD happened.

That ment the eventual invention of sticks to use more like hoes.  Then actual tools with metal ends, like shovels, and hoes.

Then someone had the bright idea of hooking up the cow they were domesticating for milk to help pull something out of the way...probably a rock or log.  Well if the cow could do that, maybe it could help pull a plow.....

Eventually steel plows were invented, and barbed wire fences.  Lotta people forget just how important barbed wire was to the settling of the American West.

Each and every invention had a different reason for it's invention.  Frankly you'd have to look up each one individually and do your research if you were interested.

Inventions generally come about because someone sees them as making life easier, or more profitable.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 6

All the inventions have come from thrust to do better for getting more benefit. In agriculture, inventions like fertilizers, pesticides, post-harvest preservations, mechanization (tractors), sprayers, chemicals and biologicals for plant growth promotion and pest control all have changed the nature of farming.