The word 'agriculture' comes from the Latin words 'ager' and 'cultura'. What does 'ager' mean?

The word "agriculture" is derived from two Latin words: "ager" (or "agri", its combining form), meaning field, land or soil, and "cultura", meaning cultivation or growing. Together, agriculture means "the cultivation of the field (soil)".

Meaning of agriculture:

• Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating the soil, growing crops and raising livestock to produce food, fibre, fuel and other products for human use.
• In a broad sense, it includes crop production, animal husbandry, horticulture, fisheries, forestry, sericulture and beekeeping.

Related words from Latin "ager":

Agrarian: relating to land, its ownership and cultivation.

Agronomy: the science of crop production and soil management. It comes from the Greek "agros" (field) and "nomos" (management).

Related words from "cultura":

• Horticulture: from "hortus" (garden), the cultivation of gardens (fruits, vegetables and flowers).
• Sericulture, apiculture, pisciculture, floriculture, olericulture and pomiculture use the same root for different kinds of cultivation or rearing.

Branches of agricultural science:

• Agronomy: field crops and their management.
• Horticulture: fruits, vegetables, flowers and plantation crops.
• Animal husbandry: rearing and breeding of livestock.
• Agricultural engineering: farm machinery, irrigation and soil and water conservation.
• Agricultural economics: costs, prices, markets and farm management.
• Plant breeding and genetics, entomology (insects) and plant pathology (diseases).

History of agriculture:

Agriculture began about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Neolithic period, in the "Fertile Crescent" of West Asia, where wheat and barley were first domesticated. This change from hunting and gathering to farming is called the Neolithic Revolution.

In the Indian subcontinent, early farming is found at Mehrgarh (in present-day Pakistan), dating to about 7000 BCE, where wheat and barley were grown and animals were domesticated.

Importance in India:

• Agriculture supports a large part of India's population and supplies raw materials to industries such as textiles, sugar and food processing.
• National Farmers' Day (Kisan Diwas) is observed on 23 December, the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Why not the other options?

• ✗"Seed" is "semen" in Latin.
• ✗"Water" is "aqua" in Latin.
• ✗"Plough" is "aratrum" in Latin.