ABSTRACT
Agriculture is a human activity aimed at producing usable food and fiber goods from land-based renewable natural resources. It is, in some respects, the quintessential productive enterprise of the human species. Hunting, foraging, and fishing preceded agriculture in the social evolution of human activities, and these forms of subsistence certainly required the crafting of tools. Nevertheless, it is the intentional tending of plants and animals throughout their life cycle that most fully captures the sense of material transformation implied by the word “production.” Agriculture gave rise to the permanent settlements and organized social structures that are the historical foundations of current civilization. Hunting and fishing can be organised enterprises milking a finely articulated division of labor, but the game and fish they harvest are found objects, not made by human effort. Although farmers generally retain a profound sense of dependence upon rainfA, soil fertility and sunshine, it is arguably in agriculture that humans first experience the synthesis of intention&y, transformation and ownership implicit in the act of producing something.
