Table of Contents
Definition of Agriculture
(noun) The large-scale practice of cultivating permanent fields, growing crops, and raising livestock to meet needs such as food and raw materials.
Examples of Agriculture
Agriculture Pronunciation
Syllabification: ag·ri·cul·ture
Audio Pronunciation
Phonetic Spelling
- American English – /A-gri-kuhl-chuhr/
- British English – /A-gri-kuhl-chuh/
International Phonetic Alphabet
- American English – /ˈæɡrəˌkəltʃər/
- British English – /ˈaɡrᵻˌkʌltʃə/
Usage Notes
- Plural: agricultures
- Agriculture is a primary subsistence strategy, others include:
- A type of innovation.
Related Quotations
- “About 5000 years ago, people developed plow agriculture. By attaching oxen and other large animals to plows, farmers could increase the amount they produced. Again thanks to technological innovation, surpluses grew. With more wealth came still sharper social stratification. Agrarian societies developed religious beliefs justifying steeper inequality. People came to believe that kings and queens ruled by ‘divine right.’ They viewed large landowners as ‘lords.’ Moreover, if you were born a peasant, you and your children were likely to remain peasants. If you were born a lord, you and your children were likely to remain lords. In the vocabulary of modern sociology, we say that stratification in agrarian societies was based more on ascription than achievement” (Brym and Lie 2007:225).
- “The development of agriculture about 5,000 years ago brought change to [society]. Agriculture emerged as people harnessed animals to ploughs, increasing the productive power of hunting and gathering more than tenfold. The resulting surplus freed some people in society from the demands of food production. Individuals began to adopt specialised economic roles: forging crafts, designing tools, raising animals and constructing dwellings. A division of labour started to become more and more important as size increased” (Macionis and Plummer 2012:464)
Related Video
Additional Information
- Ecological and Environmental Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Food and Agriculture Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Word origin of “agriculture” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
- Buttel, Frederick H., Olaf F. Larson, and Gilbert W. Gillespie. 1990. The Sociology of Agriculture. New York: Greenwood Press.
- Carolan, Michael S. 2012. The Sociology of Food and Agriculture. London: Routledge.
- Clutton-Brock, Juliet. 1989. The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation. London: Unwin Hyman.
- Grigg, David B. 1982. The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Seitz, Wesley D., Gerald C. Nelson, and Harold G. Halcrow. 2002. Economics of Resources, Agriculture, and Food. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Related Terms
- agrarian society
- ecology
- horticulture
- hunting and gathering
- industrialism
- mode of production
- pastoralism
- physical environment
- slash and burn
- subsistence strategy
References
Brym, Robert J., and John Lie. 2007. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Macionis, John, and Kenneth Plummer. 2012. Sociology: A Global Introduction. 4th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.
Works Consulted
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The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed. 2011. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Bruce Lerro. 2014. Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present. New York: Routledge.
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Cite the Definition of Agriculture
ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “agriculture.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved April 26, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/agriculture/).
APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)
agriculture. (2014). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/agriculture/
Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “agriculture.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed April 26, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/agriculture/.
MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)
“agriculture.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/agriculture/>.