Farms only
By the way, that tagline's totally not fair to say because plenty of city folks like me were once country bumpkins themselves. But listen, I get it. When a friend told me about the dating site recently as a joke, I thought it sounded hilarious, sure, but I was also intrigued. One of the many types of men I've always thought would make a great match for me is a nice southern boy, the kind who looks hot in a plaid shirt, plays guitar, and loves his mama more than sweet tea. Why is he chewing wheat?
Bizarre dating sites you didn't know existed
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops ; it is the basic facility in food production. It includes ranches , feedlots , orchards , plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms , both of which can operate on land or sea.
Farming originated independently in different parts of the world, as hunter gatherer societies transitioned to food production rather than food capture. It may have started about 12, years ago with the domestication of livestock in the Fertile Crescent in western Asia, soon to be followed by the cultivation of crops.
Modern units tend to specialise in the crops or livestock best suited to the region, with their finished products being sold for the retail market or for further processing, with farm products being traded around the world. Modern farms in developed countries are highly mechanized. In the United States , livestock may be raised on rangeland and finished in feedlots and the mechanization of crop production has brought about a great decrease in the number of agricultural workers needed.
In Europe , traditional family farms are giving way to larger production units. In Australia , some farms are very large because the land is unable to support a high stocking density of livestock because of climatic conditions. In less developed countries, small farms are the norm, and the majority of rural residents are subsistence farmers , feeding their families and selling any surplus products in the local market. The word in the sense of an agricultural land-holding derives from the verb " to farm " a revenue source, whether taxes, customs, rents of a group of manors or simply to hold an individual manor by the feudal land tenure of "fee farm".
The word is from the medieval Latin noun firma , also the source of the French word ferme , meaning a fixed agreement, contract, [2] from the classical Latin adjective firmus meaning strong, stout, firm.
Farming has been innovated at multiple different points and places in human history. The transition from hunter-gatherer to settled, agricultural societies is called the Neolithic Revolution and first began around 12, years ago, near the beginning of the geological epoch of the Holocene [6] around 12, years ago.
Subsequent step-changes in human farming practices were provoked by the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century, and the Green Revolution of the second half of the 20th century. Farming spread from the Middle East to Europe and by 4, BC people that lived in the central part of Europe were using oxen to pull plows and wagons.
A farm may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation or a company, may produce one or many types of produce, and can be a holding of any size from a fraction of a hectare [9] to several thousand hectares.
A farm may operate under a monoculture system or with a variety of cereal or arable crops, which may be separate from or combined with raising livestock. Specialist farms are often denoted as such, thus a dairy farm , fish farm , poultry farm or mink farm. Some farms may not use the word at all, hence vineyard grapes , orchard nuts and other fruit , market garden or "truck farm" vegetables and flowers.
Some farms may be denoted by their topographical location, such as a hill farm , while large estates growing cash crops such as cotton or coffee may be called plantations. Many other terms are used to describe farms to denote their methods of production, as in collective , corporate , intensive , organic or vertical. Other farms may primarily exist for research or education, such as an ant farm , and since farming is synonymous with mass production, the word "farm" may be used to describe wind power generation or puppy farm.
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture , where female cattle , goats , or other mammals are raised for their milk , which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy for processing and eventual retail sale There are many breeds of cattle that can be milked some of the best producing ones include Holstein , Norwegian Red , Kostroma , Brown Swiss , and more.
In most Western countries, a centralized dairy facility processes milk and dairy products, such as cream , butter , and cheese. In the United States, these dairies are usually local companies, while in the southern hemisphere facilities may be run by very large nationwide or trans-national corporations such as Fonterra.
Dairy farms generally sell male calves for veal meat , as dairy breeds are not normally satisfactory for commercial beef production. Many dairy farms also grow their own feed, typically including corn , alfalfa , and hay.
This is fed directly to the cows, or stored as silage for use during the winter season. Additional dietary supplements are added to the feed to improve milk production. Poultry farms are devoted to raising chickens egg layers or broilers , turkeys , ducks , and other fowl , generally for meat or eggs. A pig farm is one that specializes in raising pigs or hogs for bacon , ham and other pork products and may be free range , intensive, or both.
Farm control and ownership has traditionally been a key indicator of status and power, especially in Medieval European agrarian societies.
The distribution of farm ownership has historically been closely linked to form of government. Medieval feudalism was essentially a system that centralized control of farmland, control of farm labor and political power, while the early American democracy , in which land ownership was a prerequisite for voting rights, was built on relatively easy paths to individual farm ownership.
However, the gradual modernization and mechanization of farming, which greatly increases both the efficiency and capital requirements of farming, has led to increasingly large farms. This has usually been accompanied by the decoupling of political power from farm ownership.
In some societies especially socialist and communist , collective farming is the norm, with either government ownership of the land or common ownership by a local group. Especially in societies without widespread industrialized farming, tenant farming and sharecropping are common; farmers either pay landowners for the right to use farmland or give up a portion of the crops.
The land and buildings of a farm are called the "farmstead". Where livestock are raised in confinement on feed produced elsewhere, the term feedlot is usually used. In there were 6,, farms and 10,, family workers; In there were only 2,, farms and 2,, family workers. Producers are expecting to plant According to the World Bank , "most empirical evidence indicates that land productivity on large farms in Pakistan is lower than that of small farms, holding other factors constant. Rice is mainly produced in Nepal along with fruits like apples.
Farming is a significant economic sector in Australia. A farm is an area of land used for primary production which will include buildings. According to the UN, "green agriculture directs a greater share of total farming input expenditures towards the purchase of locally sourced input? Overall, green farming practices tend to require more labour inputs than conventional farming e. Where most of the income is from some other employment, and the farm is really an expanded residence, the term hobby farm is common.
This will allow sufficient size for recreational use but be very unlikely to produce sufficient income to be self-sustaining. Hobby farms are commonly around 2 hectares 4. Often very small farms used for intensive primary production are referred to by the specialization they are being used for, such as a dairy rather than a dairy farm, a piggery, a market garden, etc. This also applies to feedlots, which are specifically developed to a single purpose and are often not able to be used for more general purpose mixed farming practices.
In remote areas farms can become quite large. As with estates in England, there is no defined size or method of operation at which a large farm becomes a station. In the UK, farm as an agricultural unit, always denotes the area of pasture and other fields together with its farmhouse, farmyard and outbuildings. Large farms, or groups of farms under the same ownership, may be called an estate.
Conversely, a small farm surrounding the owner's dwelling is called a smallholding and is generally focused on self-sufficiency with only the surplus being sold. A farm in Africa includes various structures. Depending on climate-related areas primarily farming is the raising and breeding of grazing livestock , such as cattle , sheep , ostriches , horses or goats.
Predominantly domestic animals are raised for their meat , milk , skin , leather or fiber wool. You might even come across silk farms. Furthermore there are plenty of hunting farms, guest farms and game farms. Arable or irrigated land is often used for raising crops such as feed grains and hay for animal feeding.
On some farms Astro Farm star-gazing became very popular because of the excellent optical quality in the desert. Farm equipment has evolved over the centuries from simple hand tools such as the hoe , through ox- or horse-drawn equipment such as the plough and harrow , to the modern highly-technical machinery such as the tractor , baler and combine harvester replacing what was a highly labour-intensive occupation before the Industrial revolution.
Today much of the farm equipment used on both small [25] and large farms is automated e. As new types of high-tech farm equipment have become inaccessible to farmers that historically fixed their own equipment, Wired reports there is a growing backlash, [27] due mostly to companies using intellectual property law to prevent farmers from having the legal right to fix their equipment or gain access to the information to allow them to do it.
In addition on a smaller scale Farmbot [30] and the RepRap open source 3D printer community has begun to make open-source farm tools available of increasing levels of sophistication. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Farm disambiguation. Main article: History of agriculture. See also: Timeline of agriculture and food technology. Main article: Dairy farming. Main article: Poultry farming. Main article: Pig farming.
Main article: Agriculture in Pakistan. Main article: Agriculture in Nepal. Main article: Agriculture in Australia. Main article: Agricultural machinery.
Agriculture and Agronomy portal. Collins dictionary of the English language. London: Collins. Cassell's Latin dictionary. Bibcode : Sci International Commission on Stratigraphy. Archived from the original on Retrieved Oxford University Press. Retrieved 15 August Retrieved 12 July The average size of farms in India is a mere 1. Archived from the original on March 1, Retrieved February 17, Anna Creek Station is well known as the largest cattle station in the world, covering an area of 24, sq.
Archived from the original on 25 October Retrieved 26 October
Farmers, ranchers, agriculture students and livestock owners can meet on queeniesnailsandspa.co.nz, a social network that has made at least (farmer) marriages. With all that being said, I decided to give the Farmers Only site a good ole country shot, and here's an unfiltered review based on my experience.
Agriculture has made a tremendous contribution to the quality of American life. It is not just an industry, it is the foundation of our civilization. Agriculture provides the basic essentials for living: the food we eat, the beverages we drink, the clothing we wear, and the materials for our homes.
If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, it needs to become more like manufacturing, says Geoffrey Carr. Fortunately, that is already beginning to happen.
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops ; it is the basic facility in food production. It includes ranches , feedlots , orchards , plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms , both of which can operate on land or sea.
In the age of farm-to-table, only a small fraction of US farmers are profitable
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Bugs in the system
All rights reserved. He kneels on the ground, covered by a thin layer of straw as far as the eye can see, and prods gingerly into the soil. Barely scratching the surface, he points to white, fiber-like strands— hyphae , the filaments of a fungus—a worm and then a spider racing for cover. At Lady Moon Farms, in Punta Gorda, kale is planted in raised beds that are organically fertilized and covered in plastic to retain moisture and prevent weed growth. Lady Moon Farms originated in with five acres in Pennsylvania and has grown to 2, acres on nine farms, expanding to Florida and Georgia for an extended growing season. It rotates crops among squash, leafy greens, cucumbers, watermelon, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. Workers at Lady Moon Farms in Punta Gorda inspect yellow squash, discarding about two-thirds of that day's harvest due to small nicks from handling; consumers may reject vegetables with such imperfections. Most is donated to a food bank; the remainder is composted or used as livestock feed.
All rights reserved. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons.
He is referring to Apricot Lane Farms, a acre biodynamic and organic farm in Moorpark, California, that Chester runs with his wife, Molly. The couple nurtures different types of vegetables, 75 varieties of stone fruit, and countless animal residents: Scottish highland cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, ducks, hens, horses and livestock dogs. Last year, Apricot Lane Farms was recognized by the National Wildlife Federation and the North American Butterfly Association for supporting so much wildlife — not a recognition typically given to farms.
Can we ditch intensive farming - and still feed the world?
From urban farming to drones, innovation can help fill the gap between production and consumption. Mon 28 Jan Food production around the world must rise by half in the next 30 years to sustain a global population expected to top 10 billion by Compared with , an extra 7,tn calories will be needed a year in If food production increases along current lines, that would require a landmass twice the area of India. Bringing more land under agricultural production is one answer to filling this gap, but it cannot solve the problem alone. Intensive farming has already had a huge effect on biodiversity and the environment worldwide. Pesticides, which have helped boost cereal and fruit production, have also killed bees and myriad species of insects in large numbers. Fertilisers that have improved poor soils have also had unintended harmful consequences. Chemical fertilisers also contribute directly to climate change, through the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, and to air pollution through ammonia. The most obvious alternative to industrialised intensive farming in the developed world is organic farming. Organic farmers must adhere to strict rules on how they grow their crops and raise their livestock. These include using antibiotics on animals only when necessary, cutting out chemical fertilisers and pesticides almost completely in favour of natural alternatives such as manure and wood ash as fertilisers and plant-derived pesticides, and managing land to provide habitats for wildlife. Rob Percival, head of policy at the Soil Association, says organic farming can feed the world, if consumption patterns are adjusted to encourage those who can afford meat to eat less of it.
Biodynamic farming is on the rise – but how effective is this alternative agricultural practice?
As Americans, we all participate in agriculture—the system that feeds our economy as well as our families. From our personal health to the state of the climate, agriculture affects critical aspects of our day-to-day lives. Yet few people know much about how agriculture works. Over the past 70 years, small farms have gone out of business as industrialized multinational corporations have taken over our food supply. Take the case of grains. The US is a superpower in grain production, thanks to massive stores of high-quality top soil in the Midwest built up over millennia. Most grains in this country do not go to feed people, however, but enter into an industrialized feed and biofuel industry that is extracting an immeasurable toll on our land. What do we do with this enormous surplus that our tax dollars fund? We make ethanol. In other words, ethanol production is not the answer to an over-abundant supply of corn.
