Agriculture or agriculture is the science that deals with the production of plant and animal products, increasing their quality and efficiency, keeping these products in appropriate conditions, processing, evaluating and marketing them. In other words, it is all of the maintenance, feeding, breeding, protection and mechanization activities of all kinds of plant-animal products that can be human food and have economic value, and all of the fishing activities in stagnant waters or in special areas.
This branch of science requires special talent and intuition as well as scientific knowledge.[1] It is an applied science and its purpose is to obtain economic values for the benefit of people.[2]
Agriculture consists of two main branches of production. These are crop production and animal production. The only difference between these two main branches of agricultural production and even their definitions is that the material they use is plant material in one and animal material in the other.
Agriculture has played a major role in the transition of humanity to collective life. When the hunter-gatherer societies during the Stone Age were replaced by the peoples engaged in agriculture, societies and states emerged.[4] Until the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was the main livelihood of the vast majority of humanity. However, today, there are visible developments in agriculture and the effects of technology. Especially during the 20th century, there have been significant changes in agriculture. According to the Haber-Bosch process, the first artificial fertilizers were obtained with manure mixed with ammonium nitrate.[5] Thanks to the mechanization that reduced the workforce in agriculture, reductions were observed in the number of workers in agriculture.