Agriculture |
=Agriculture v Farming and other articles=
This page and that of should be coordinated. As to how, i have no idea: The finer points of the English language escape me here 
Perhaps a merge and a redirect --Anders Trlind
I think they should be merged. says: Kinds of agriculture include farming, which is raising crops for harvest, and [animal husbandry].
says: Farming is the process of producing food by cultivation of certain plants and the raising of domesticated animals. See also agriculture.
Really I think the two are more or less synonymous. and raising crops are part of both. -- hagedis
Both the Unesco Thesaurus and Library of Congress subject headings have Farming: use Agriculture .
I think agriculture is the best term for both the economic sector (usually taken to include animal husbandry), and the practice of producing crops (though here, we often differentiate between agricultural and pastoral populations and activities, so livestock may sometimes be excluded). The article(s) could refer to such nuances, with links or redirects from/to Animal husbandry , Livestock production or whatever is preferred.
Farming to me suggests a particular form of organisation, usually involving commercial production by a private operator engaged directly on the holding, hence distinct from estate, plantation or communal cultivation (the word itself originates around the 12th century with the leasing of western European estate lands, as in to farm out an enterprise).
:The current articles were basically discussing the same thing, so I ve combined them into Agriculture, with Farming a redirect. If there are any subtle separate meanings they can be fixed up later.
It would be wonderful to see
:Agreed. todo
=Corn v Maize=
Concerning the word corn - Maize is called corn in the U.S., but I thought that corn in the U.K. means grains in general, primarily, but not only, wheat. Somebody who speaks the Queen s English please verify! -- 13:45 Sep 3, 2002 (PDT)
I fear you will probably not consider my input acceptable, but when I talk to british people, the word corn refers only to grain. However, it is about two different types of crops : wheat and oats. Of course oats is not much used anymore.
There s a nice story my father in law told me about Corn and Paris liberation by americans. People in Paris were rather hungry. They needed bread badly. At that time, our bread was made from wheat, sometimes from rye. When american people came to Paris, they asked how they could help us in terms of food. Some administrative employee said we needed corn to make bread (we still learn british english...)...We ended up with loads of maize, that basically nobody knew how to cook.
=Crop production data=
World production
hold on ! Year reference is required for such information. Where does that come from In particular, rice production numbers are somehow wrong if what production is is not described.
:Data is from the US government website http://www.fas.usda.gov/currwmt.html, listed at bottom of article. I checked some of the figures from the included Excel tables, but I must admit rice looked low to me too. It s probably commercial production, since otherwise rice grown in India and China would surely make it top crop. I don t really know much about this topic, but I said to that I would put in some world figures, having moved her US data to a subsiduary article.
::I second you in the idea of creating an agriculture in the United States of America as I suggested to her (I decided to call people her as long as I don t know about their gender) on her talk page. This article should stay as general as possible.
::About the year reference. It is very important to put it in the article, not to expect readers to go at the external links to try to find that very precious information. Production rates and trade rates change a lot over time. And these figures (probably years 2000 or 2001 or 2002) will mean very little in 2010 perhaps. If year is added, editors will feel like keeping up to date also. But as such, it is not good. Please add the year.
::As for gross figures, it should be mentionned what are defined exactly in the count. Rice as given here is giving (er, I am not sure it is the right way to say it) is milling rice.
::Here are what I find are the most important points ::the three most important cereals crops are wheat, corn and rice. All three are produced in rather equivalent tonnage. Wheat and corn around 600 millions tons, rice slightly below, around 550 millions tons in years 1998-2002. Until a couple of years ago, wheat was over corn. Wheat is predominant in europe, canada, russia, northern china, corn in americas and rice in south asia. Very roughly. But the volumes of the three cereal are quite similar. ::However, the amount of rice is often underestimated because some give the milled rice production (rather than the paddy production) - in particular developped countries. The milled rice is about 60-70 % of total rice. Now, if we consider the goal of agriculture is first to feed the world, and for readers to understand which are the major cereals feeding the world, the paddy rice production must be given, or both amounts must be given :third important point. Corn and wheat are both delocated crops, with huge amounts being traded. There are a small bunch of countries producing most of these two cereals, and trading it to other countries. Rice situation is quite different, most production is directly consummed. .
:Probably better as a table anyway, but I m one of the few HTML illerates, Apologies. 12:53 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)
::No pb, my browser is allergic to table. It breaks the < and > ant
I believe the data is plausable, and of course the U.S. government is an unimpeachable source on any topic
>not
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