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History of agriculture: key moments, dates and places

From the first cereal fields of the Fertile Crescent to synthetic fertiliser and the Green Revolution: 100 in-depth stories on the history of farming, each…

The origins of farming in the Fertile Crescent: c. 10,000–8000 BCE, Southwest Asia · Fertile Crescent. Cultivating plants and keeping animals gradually transform food production and the organisation of settlements.
The history of rice cultivation and domestication: c. 8000–4000 BCE, China · middle and lower Yangtze basin. From gathering wild rice to cultivating plants whose grains are easier to harvest and retain.
The history of maize and Mesoamerican agriculture: c. 7000 BCE, Mesoamerica · southern Mexico. Generations of selection transform teosinte into a crop that will underpin many economies across the Americas.
The history of irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia: 6th–5th millennia BCE, Present-day Iraq · Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Irrigation supports farming on the alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia.
Early dairying: evidence of cheesemaking in Neolithic Kuyavia: 6th millennium BCE, Kuyavia, present-day Poland; wider European and Anatolian context. Fats preserved in pottery strainers reveal how early farmers processed milk and reorganised livestock husbandry.
The first farmers in the lands of modern Poland: c. 5350–5050 BCE, Poland · Gwoździec, Zakliczyn municipality. A Linear Pottery settlement documents early farming north of the Carpathians.
Kuk: independent agricultural origins in New Guinea: c. 5000–4500 BCE, Kuk, Wahgi Valley, Papua New Guinea. Cultivation mounds, taro and bananas reveal a distinct New Guinean pathway towards agriculture.
The First Olive Groves: The Emergence of Levantine Horticulture: c. 5000 BCE · evidence from Tel Tsaf, Jordan Valley and southern Levant; later the Mediterranean Basin. Charcoal, stones, oil residues and pollen reveal how long-lived plantings changed the organisation of farming.
Budj Bim: Gunditjmara Aquaculture and Water Management: c. 6600 cal BP · millennia of modification; UNESCO 2019, Australia, south-western Victoria: Tae Rak, Kurtonitj and Tyrendarra. Channels, stone barriers and holding ponds enabled Gunditjmara communities to direct water, retain eels and sustain a long-lived food economy.
Neolithic Flax: Fields, Oil and the Development of Fibre Production: Fourth–third millennia BCE · Alpine foreland settlements, Lake Constance, Upper Swabia and the Alpine region. Preserved plants and objects reveal how flax cultivation connected seed production with fibres, fishing nets and woven textiles.
Sorghum and pearl millet: African pathways to farming: 4th–3rd millennia BCE, Sahel: northern Mali and eastern Sudan. Two different cereals, distinct domestication regions and agricultural connections between Africa and Asia.
Date Palms: Mesopotamian Gardens and Oasis Economies: fourth–third millennia BCE · early cultivation, Southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf; later North African oases. Palm gardens combined long-term investment, variety propagation, skilled labour and rights to future harvests.
Cacao in Amazonia: Growers, Beverages and Early Exchange: approximately 5,300 years ago · Ecuadorian evidence, Santa Ana–La Florida, Palanda, Ecuador; later South America and Mesoamerica. Starch, theobromine and DNA document early cacao use, while further studies reveal agricultural networks of exchange.
Indus agriculture: cities, rivers and two growing seasons: c. 2600–1900 BCE, Present-day Pakistan and northwestern India. Diverse winter and summer crops supplied the cities and villages of the extensive Harappan civilisation.
Grain, granaries and administration in Egypt’s Middle Kingdom: c. 2055–1650 BCE, Nile Valley, Egypt; examples from Thebes and Edfu. Harvest storage, accounts and food allocations connected Egyptian households with state institutions and mortuary cults.
Chicken Domestication: From Asian Fields to Poultry Keeping: c. 1650–1250 BCE · evidence from Ban Non Wat, Ban Non Wat, northeastern Thailand; subsequent Eurasian history. Cereal fields, genetic exchange and changing uses of birds reveal the successive stages of chicken, meat and egg production.
Andean agriculture: terraces, raised fields and farming across elevations: 1st millennium BCE–16th century · selected pre-Columbian systems, Central and southern Andes · Peru and Bolivia. How Andean communities combined hillside terraces, raised fields, diverse crops and food storage.
Persian qanats: groundwater and dryland agriculture: 1st millennium BCE and later history, Iranian Plateau; the agricultural landscape of Kashan as an example. Gently sloping tunnels brought groundwater to fields and settlements, connecting technical knowledge with organised resource sharing.
African Rice: Independent Domestication and Farmer Knowledge: First millennium BCE · early evidence in Mali, Inland Niger Delta, Mali; West Africa and later the Guianas. Archaeology, genetics and social history reveal African rice origins and farmers’ contributions to the creation and survival of varieties.
Columella and Roman agricultural knowledge: c. 60–65 CE · De re rustica, Roman Italy · Mediterranean connections. Twelve books on crops, animals, processing and labour, read as the prescriptions of an estate owner.
Barbegal: Roman watermills: 2nd–3rd centuries CE · built in the 2nd century, Barbegal near Arles · present-day France. Sixteen mills arranged in two cascades reveal the scale of Roman grain processing. Carbonate deposits help reconstruct machinery that has disappeared.
Desert Farming in the Negev: From the Nabataeans to Byzantium: Fourth–seventh centuries CE · expansion; partial later continuity, Negev Highlands, especially around Shivta, Avdat and Nessana. Terraces, channels and sustained labour turned episodic runoff into a farming resource, supporting wine production for distant markets.
Hohokam Canals: Farming the Sonoran Desert: c. 450–1450 CE · irrigation traditions are much older, Salt and Gila valleys, present-day Arizona, USA. Canal networks connected fields, settlements and shared work in the Sonoran Desert; their transformation did not mean the disappearance of its peoples.
Qimin Yaoshu: agricultural knowledge in northern China: c. 533–544 CE · conventionally c. 540, Northern China · the Yellow River plains. Soil management, seed selection, livestock and processing in a major source for the history of Chinese farming.
Terra Preta: How Amazonian Communities Changed Their Soils: Seventh century CE · Osvaldo example; origins much earlier, Amazonia: Brazil, Bolivia and other parts of the basin. Settlement deposits, charcoal and organic inputs reveal how Amazonian communities created and used enduring fertile soils.
Tea in Tang China: From Cultivated Shrubs to a Taxed Commodity: 8th–9th centuries · Chajing c. 760–780; tea tax 793, China: southern growing regions, the Yangtze basin and northern centres of consumption. Leaf processing, monasteries, merchants and state taxation connected tea-growing households with urban culture in Tang China.
Three-field farming in medieval Europe: 9th–11th centuries · gradual adoption, Western and Central Europe. Winter crops, spring crops and fallow form a rotation that reshapes field organisation and the working year.
Angkor: Khmer Water Management and Agricultural Landscapes: Ninth–fifteenth centuries · network growth and change, Angkor plain, near Siem Reap, Cambodia. Reservoirs and canals connected fields, settlements and temples. Their history encompasses labour, monsoon variability and gradual regional transformation.
Chinampas in the Basin of Mexico: farming between fields and canals: c. 900–1521 · pre-Hispanic development; cultivation continued afterwards, Basin of Mexico · Xochimilco and Xaltocan. The history of fixed raised fields linking food production with water transport and the transformation of wetlands.
Norse farms in Greenland: c. AD 985–15th century, Southwestern Greenland. Husbandry and hunting formed an integrated provisioning system; settlement decline reflects overlapping pressures rather than a simple failure to adapt.
Champa rice and Song agricultural change: 1012; 11th–13th centuries, Fujian and the Yangtze–Huai regions, China. Disseminating planting material widened farmers’ options; outcomes depended on water, labour and local cropping calendars.
Bali’s Subak: A Millennium of Cooperation over Water and Rice: 9th–11th centuries · early evidence; UNESCO inscription 2012, Bali, Indonesia; example: Jatiluwih and Catur Angga Batukaru landscape. Canals, temples and farmers’ agreements formed a system in which water allocation depended on cooperation extending beyond a single field.
Agronomy in al-Andalus: Ibn al-Awwam and agricultural knowledge: 11th–12th centuries; compendium probably late 12th century, Toledo, Seville and Aljarafe, al-Andalus; present-day Spain. Treatises, gardens and canals: medieval agricultural knowledge and the limits of historical reconstruction.
Cistercian Granges: How Monasteries Organised Farming Estates: 12th–13th centuries; Fountains founded 1132, Cistercian from 1135, Western Europe; Fountains, Rievaulx and Byland in Yorkshire, England. Cistercian houses linked fields, pastures, mills and resource rights into networks of farms. Organisation, diverse labour and market connections underpinned their economy.
The Mesta: Castilian flocks, roads and privileges: 1273–1836, Castile, Iberian Peninsula. A livestock corporation connecting seasonal grazing grounds, protected drove roads and international wool markets.
Medieval English Wool: Sheep, Monasteries and Trade: Twelfth–fourteenth centuries · export duty from 1275, England; example: Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire. Sheep farming connected rural work with textile markets, merchant credit and royal revenue. The year 1275 marks an important stage in export taxation.
Kūmara in Aotearoa: Māori Gardens and Winter Reserves: From the thirteenth century · adaptation across later centuries, Aotearoa/New Zealand; Triangle Flat, Ōtuataua and Pūrākaunui. Māori adapted Polynesian crops to a seasonal climate through soil modification, storage and detailed knowledge of local environments.
The Great Famine of 1315–1317: Rain, Grain and Vulnerable Farms: 1315–1317; some regional crises extended into the 1320s, Northern and north-western Europe, including England, Wales and Flanders. Harvest failures exposed the dependence of farms on weather, reserves, prices and access to land. Warfare and a subsequent cattle epidemic deepened several regional crises.
Coffee between Ethiopia and Yemen: 15th–17th centuries · cultivation, drinking and trade, Ethiopia and Yemen · Red Sea trading routes. Arabica’s African origins, Yemen’s mountain farms and commerce through Red Sea ports together shaped the early coffee economy.
The Vistula Grain Trade: Estates, River Transport and Gdańsk: Later 15th–17th centuries; political turning point in 1466, The Vistula basin, Gdańsk and Baltic routes to western Europe. Grain exports connected demesne farms, peasant households, river ports and merchants, with real social costs behind the granary-of-Europe image.
The Columbian Exchange: crops, people and oceans: from 1492 CE, Americas, Europe and Africa · later global networks. Maize and potatoes spread beyond the Americas; wheat and livestock travel in the opposite direction.
Třeboň: a carp-farming landscape: medieval origins; 16th-century expansion, Třeboň Basin, South Bohemia. Netolický and Krčín developed an interconnected pond network whose operation joined carp biology with water control and organised labour.
Ifugao Terraces: Rice, Autonomy and Revised Dating: Sixteenth–eighteenth centuries · intensive rice expansion; settlement is older, Ifugao, Cordillera mountains, Luzon, Philippines. Archaeology revises terrace chronology, revealing local responses to colonialism, diverse farming and the enduring importance of water rights.
English water meadows: earlier fodder from river valleys: Sixteenth–nineteenth centuries; Vaughan publication 1610, England; Wessex, Herefordshire and Norfolk. Controlled water flow encouraged early grass growth, linking meadow management with livestock and arable land.
Beemster 1612: Turning a Lake into an Agricultural Landscape: 1607–1612 · drained in 1612, Beemster, North Holland, Netherlands. Merchant investment, wind-powered drainage and a geometric land division created farmland dependent on continuing water management.
Caribbean sugar plantations: production, enslavement and landscape: 17th–19th centuries · Barbados's transformation from the 1640s, Caribbean · Barbados as the principal case study. Fields, mills and boiling houses connected through coerced labour, capital and Atlantic commerce.
Parliamentary enclosure in England: About 1750–1850; general legislation in 1801 and 1845, England; local example: Helpston. The division of commons and reorganisation of fields reshaped farming while exposing conflicts over production, property and rural livelihoods.
Lyon and the rise of veterinary education: 4 August 1761 authorisation; teaching from 1762, Lyon, France; subsequently Alfort and a European school network. Bourgelat’s school organised knowledge about farm animals, combining practice, anatomy and the needs of agriculture and government.
Breadfruit reaches Saint Vincent and Jamaica: 1793; Oceanian cultivation much earlier, Tahiti → Saint Vincent and Jamaica. The Providence expedition carried breadfruit to British Caribbean colonies. Plants previously selected in Oceania became part of local food traditions.
Cotton ginning and the plantation economy: 1793–1794; consequences in the nineteenth century, Savannah area, Georgia, USA; Atlantic connections. Whitney’s design and subsequent improvements changed cotton processing within an economy connected to industry, slavery and Indigenous land dispossession.
Sugar Beet: From Marggraf to the Konary Factory: 1747–1865 · first Konary processing campaign: 1802, Berlin, Konary in Lower Silesia and continental Europe. Chemical experiments, crop selection and industrial processing created a new branch of the European agricultural economy.
Appert and the development of preserved foods: 1810 publication; experiments from the late eighteenth century, Massy and Paris, France; subsequently Britain and other countries. Heating food in closed containers connected seasonal harvests with processing businesses, packaging manufacture and later research.
The Wardian case and living plant transport: 1829; sea trial 1833–1834, London, Sydney and global horticultural networks. Protecting light and moisture helped living plants travel, with consequences for nurseries, commercial crops and biological risk controls.
The history of agricultural mechanisation: 1831 CE · McCormick reaper demonstration, USA · Virginia; later manufacturing in Chicago. Mechanical grain harvesting becomes a symbol of nineteenth-century changes in farm labour.
The Guano Boom: Peru and the Global Fertiliser Trade: from c. 1840 · expansion in the mid-nineteenth century, Chincha Islands, Peru; routes to Europe and North America. A marine ecosystem supplied nutrients to distant farms. Export expansion linked soil fertility with coerced labour, state finance and the depletion of accumulated deposits.
Buffalo elevators and bulk grain handling: 1842–1843; development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buffalo, Lake Erie, New York, USA. Dart and Dunbar’s enterprise connected mechanical grain lifting with port storage; later development involved railways, quality standards and labour organisation.
Rothamsted since 1843: fields that became a scientific archive: 1843: Broadbalk established; first harvest in 1844, Rothamsted, Harpenden, England, United Kingdom. Crop yields, soil samples and weather observations kept across generations in long-term field experiments.
The Great Irish Famine: Farming, Poverty and Migration: 1845–1852, Ireland. Potato blight combined with poverty, unequal access to land and inadequate relief to produce a profound social catastrophe.
The silkworm crisis and Pasteur’s investigations: 1840s–1870s; Pasteur’s investigations 1865–1870, Alès and the Cévennes, southern France; European and Asian sericulture networks. A husbandry crisis connected mulberry farming with research on infection. Examining parents and identifying egg batches helped limit pébrine.
Chicago Board of Trade: Grain, Contracts and Market Rules: From 1848 · standardisation and oversight in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chicago, Illinois, United States; agricultural hinterlands and international commerce. Quality grades, warehouse documents and futures contracts changed how grain was sold and how price exposure was distributed.
Langstroth’s hive and movable frames: 1851–1853; patent 5 October 1852, Philadelphia, United States; European beekeeping traditions. Movable frames supported repeated inspection and the reuse of sound comb; a patent and manual helped circulate the system.
The Land Code of 1858: Agriculture and Rights in the Ottoman Empire: 1858 · further legislation and varied provincial practice in the later nineteenth century, Ottoman Empire; legislation in Istanbul and varied provincial implementation. The code organised cultivation, inheritance and transfers while retaining complex relationships among the state, possessors and communities.
The Homestead Act of 1862: Farms, Ownership and the Costs of Settlement: 1862 · applications began in 1863, United States; example: near Beatrice, Nebraska. Conditional land grants helped establish farms, but required capital and labour and formed part of a wider history of Indigenous dispossession.
The Morrill Act of 1862: Colleges, Experiments and Agricultural Extension: 2 July 1862; institutional development through 1914, United States; federal legislation in Washington, DC. Land grants supported colleges; later laws connected teaching, research and extension. Expansion also involved Indigenous dispossession and racial segregation.
Phylloxera: the crisis that rebuilt Europe’s vineyards: Approximately 1863–1900; consequences extending into later centuries, Southern France and other European wine-growing regions. A root-feeding pest forced growers to combine European grape varieties with more resistant rootstocks of American origin.
Peasant Land Emancipation in Congress Poland, 1864: 19 February / 2 March 1864, Kingdom of Poland under Russian rule. Land reform transformed peasant ownership and relations between villages, estates and the state, while leaving major agrarian inequalities.
Mendel and peas: making inheritance a quantitative question: 1856–1863: crosses; 1865: lectures; 1866: publication, Augustinian abbey in Brno, Moravia; present-day Czechia. From crossing garden peas to quantitative inheritance studies and the later development of scientific plant breeding.
Barbed wire and agriculture’s new boundaries: 24 November 1874: Glidden’s patent; development from the 1860s, DeKalb, Illinois; the US plains and wider technological circulation. Glidden’s patent helped industrialise fencing, supporting crop protection and grazing control while intensifying disputes over land.
Rubber: from Amazonia to Asian plantations: 1876–early 20th century, Brazil, Kew, Ceylon, Singapore and Malaya. Plant transfers, botanic gardens, growers’ knowledge and migrant labour created a new geography of rubber production.
Goffart and the development of forage ensiling: 1877: manual; experiments from the mid-nineteenth century, Burtin, near Nouan-le-Fuzelier, Sologne, France; international circulation. Goffart’s experiments and circulating manuals promoted ensiling, connecting crop storage with livestock, work organisation and developing knowledge of fermentation.
Dunedin 1882: Frozen Meat Connects Farm and London: 1882 · first successful New Zealand shipment to Britain, Totara Estate, Port Chalmers and London. Refrigeration opened a distant market for meat, connecting sheep farming with railways, industrial works and ocean shipping.
Hjedding 1882: The Rise of Danish Dairy Cooperatives: 1882 · expansion in the late nineteenth century, Hjedding near Ølgod, western Jutland, Denmark. Farmers pooled milk deliveries and ownership of processing, establishing common rules for quality, payments, borrowing and management.
Mycorrhiza: fungi in plant nutrition: 1885: Frank’s concept; earlier observations and later experiments, Berlin and the Prussian forestry network; later work in Europe and North America. Frank named mycorrhiza, while later researchers tested its mechanisms and significance for the nutrition of crop plants.
Rinderpest: African catastrophe and global eradication: c. 1887–1897; eradication 2011, Eastern and Southern Africa; later worldwide cooperation. An epizootic that undermined many agricultural economies, followed by more than a century of work to end transmission worldwide.
Root nodules and biological nitrogen fixation: 1886: announcement; 1888: Hellriegel and Wilfarth’s monograph, Bernburg and Berlin, Germany; later trials in Illinois, United States. Comparative experiments connected nitrogen gains in legumes with root nodules and living microorganisms, helping establish agricultural inoculation.
The ladybird that helped save California citrus: 1888–1889; subsequent research and development, California, especially the Los Angeles area; insects obtained from Australia. Introducing a natural enemy of cottony cushion scale became a famous crop-protection success whose mechanisms and limitations were studied for decades.
From Gros Michel to Cavendish: Crisis and the Banana Trade: Late nineteenth century–1960s · a prolonged transition, Central America and the Caribbean; connections to importing markets. The Gros Michel crisis required changes in cultivars, packaging and transport, reshaping production networks and work in exporting regions.
Soil Survey: putting soils on the map: 1899: initial field season; 1900: collected report, United States: Cecil County, the Connecticut and Salt Lake valleys, and Pecos. Federal investigation and state cooperation developed soil mapping, while successive researchers revised concepts of profiles, classification and map interpretation.
Marquis Wheat and the Saunders Programme: 1892–1916; pure planting in 1904, Ottawa and prairie stations, Canada. Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta, successive selections, field trials and the distribution of Marquis seed.
Hybrid Maize: From Experimental Plots to the Seed Industry: 1908–1940s; widespread adoption by 1960, United States: Cold Spring Harbor, Connecticut and the Corn Belt. Controlled crosses, field experiments and specialised seed production changed how American farmers obtained planting material and assessed new varieties.
The 1913 Land Act and Agricultural Segregation: 19 June 1913; extended 1936, repealed 1991, Union of South Africa; Free State, Natal, Transvaal and Cape. The Act constrained access to land and strengthened pressure on farming families. Plaatje and Msimang documented its consequences within households.
The Haber–Bosch process and nitrogen fertilisers: 1913 CE · plant commissioned, Germany · Oppau, now part of Ludwigshafen. Industrial ammonia synthesis opens a new chapter in nitrogen fertiliser production.
Ejidos and Agrarian Reform in Mexico: 1911–1993; constitution 5 February 1917, Mexico; Querétaro, La Laguna and ejidal communities. From revolutionary land claims through Cárdenas’s reforms to rights certification: institutions combining household parcels with common resources.
The Women’s Land Army: Women in Britain’s Wartime Agriculture: 1917–1919 and 1939–1950, Great Britain; separate organisational arrangements in Scotland. Wartime labour shortages brought organised recruitment of women for farms. Behind the posters were practical skills, demanding work and struggles over equal treatment.
Locust phase theory and observing agricultural threats: 1921: Uvarov’s theory; nineteenth-century observations to mechanistic research, The Caucasus, London, southern Africa and international research networks. Uvarov’s theory connected different locust forms and opened investigation of density, behaviour and habitat in the development of crop threats.
Organic Farming: From Koberwitz to IFOAM: 1924–2000; Koberwitz course 7–16 June 1924, Kobierzyce, India, Britain, United States, France and Switzerland. Courses, composting, experiments and associations turned dispersed ideas into an organic farming movement and systems of market standards.
Seed banks: from Vavilov’s expeditions to safety duplicates in Svalbard: 1920s–1930s: Vavilov’s programme; 2008: Svalbard opens, Leningrad/St Petersburg and worldwide collections; Svalbard, Norway. Collecting, documenting and regenerating crop diversity, and creating secure copies of genebank collections.
Collectivisation, 1929–1933: The Coercive Transformation of Soviet Agriculture: 1929–1933 · principal drive of forced collectivisation, USSR: Ukraine, Kazakhstan, regions of the Russian SFSR and other areas. State control, confiscation and repression destroyed farm autonomy and contributed to catastrophic famines with distinct regional experiences.
The Dust Bowl: Drought, Soil Erosion and Agricultural Change: 1930s, Great Plains, United States. Repeated drought, exposed soils and economic distress produced dust storms, migration and a lasting expansion of public soil conservation.
Rural Electrification: How the REA Changed American Farm Life: 1935–1936 · REA established and legislation enacted, Washington, DC, and rural areas of the United States. Public credit, cooperatives and new distribution networks changed food production and the everyday work of farming households.
The Green Revolution in agricultural history: 1940s–1960s, Mexico, followed by India, Pakistan and elsewhere. Wheat breeding and changes in cultivation methods enable higher grain production.
The Bengal Famine: Rice, War and Access to Food: 1943–1944; commission report in 1945, Bengal, British India; now India and Bangladesh. The damaged 1942 crop, wartime restrictions, lost purchasing power and delayed relief in the catastrophe of rural Bengal.
Poland’s Land Reform of 1944: Redistribution, Dispossession and Rural Change: 6 September 1944; implementation and further changes after 1945, Poland within changing borders; the first phase in territory controlled by the PKWN. The PKWN decree combined peasant land allotments with the dispossession of estate owners and the consolidation of a new political order.
FAO in 1945: Agriculture and Nutrition Become an International Responsibility: 16 October 1945 · FAO established, Quebec City, Canada; preparations in Hot Springs and Washington. A permanent postwar institution linked knowledge of agricultural production, nutrition and rural life with cooperation between governments.
Japan’s Land Reform, 1946–1950: From Tenants to Owner-Cultivators: 1946–1950 · principal programme; statutory safeguards in 1952, Japan under Allied occupation; decisions in Tokyo, local implementation. Government purchase and resale of farmland transformed property, incomes and rural power while retaining the family farm as the basic unit of cultivation.
Silent Spring: agriculture and ecological responsibility: 1962 publication; 1963 report; 1972 EPA decision, Silver Spring, Maryland; a US debate with wider influence. Rachel Carson’s book accelerated debate over pesticides in the environment, risk investigation and the organisation of crop protection.
The Common Agricultural Policy in 1962: From Market Organisation to Reform: 1962 · reforms in 1984, 1992 and 2003, European Economic Community; institutional centre in Brussels. Common agricultural markets, intervention and shared finance reshaped relations between farms, consumers and public institutions.
Operation Flood: Cooperatives and India’s Dairy Transformation: 1970–1996 · earlier foundations: Kaira 1946, NDDB 1965, India: Anand in Gujarat and an expanding network of milk-producing areas and urban markets. Operation Flood connected smallholder procurement, processing, urban sales and animal husbandry services within a long-term development programme.
Cerrado: Research, Soybeans and Landscape Change: Since the 1970s; Embrapa 1973, CPAC 1975, Brazil; Planaltina and different parts of the Cerrado biome. Soil science, plant breeding and bacteria combined with credit and infrastructure to reshape production, social relationships and Cerrado ecosystems.
Precision Agriculture: GPS, Sensors and Yield Maps: 1980s–early twenty-first century; GPS milestones: 1995 and 2000, United States, Europe and Australia; example centre: Ames, Iowa. Satellite navigation, yield mapping and machine control connect observations with decisions for different parts of a field.