Earth

An agricultural and food resource

Agriculture causes a major transformation of the soil and represents the main exploitation of renewable resources (water, soil, flora, fauna, and atmosphere) of our planet. Agriculture is the main productive activity (sometimes the only activity) for many countries, in particular for tropical and subtropical regions. Agriculture uses the soil to produce food (fruits, vegetables, roots, and other parts of plants that represent the daily nutrition for more than nine-tenth of men), fibres and other useful goods. Agriculture is practiced almost at all latitudes, although in many different ways: from the most primitive low-income type of agriculture of the poorest parts of the Earth (Africa, Asia, central-southern America), to the modern high-productivity agriculture of mild regions (Europe and North America). In order to face the world growing need for food (without being able to increase the surface of farmed land, as the land was not-productive or it was already occupied by the cities), agriculture experienced a real revolution. It has become intensive, that is based on high production and specialized. This means that the aim of agriculture today is to farm just a few selected crops in order to be more competitive and reach a better quality. This has all been achieved thanks to agricultural technical and technological progress, the introduction of more efficient irrigation systems and the growing use of chemical fertilizers and phytosanitary products, that are easy to use and economically convenient, although in some cases they pollute.