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kan agriculture has experienced a surge in growth of market gardeners, small farms and farmers' markets in recent years, with the highest percentage increase 46 in the nation in growth in farmers' markets in 2011, compared to 17 nationwide. The peony industry has also taken off, as the growing season allows farmers to harvest during a gap in supply elsewhere in the world, thereby filling a niche in the flower market.
Alaska, with no counties, lacks county fairs. However, a small assortment of state and local fairs with the Alaska State Fair in Palmer the largest, are held mostly in the late summer. The fairs are mostly located in communities with historic or current agricultural activity, and feature local farmers exhibiting produce in addition to more highprofile commercial activities such as carnival rides, concerts and food. "Alaska Grown" is used as an agricultural slogan.
Alaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Seafood is one of the few fo |
od items that is often cheaper within the state than outside it. Many Alaskans take advantage of salmon seasons to harvest portions of their household diet while fishing for subsistence, as well as sport. This includes fish taken by hook, net or wheel.
Hunting for subsistence, primarily caribou, moose, and Dall sheep is still common in the state, particularly in remote Bush communities. An example of a traditional native food is Akutaq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can consist of reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.
Alaska's reindeer herding is concentrated on Seward Peninsula, where wild caribou can be prevented from mingling and migrating with the domesticated reindeer.
Most food in Alaska is transported into the state from "Outside" the other 49 US states, and shipping costs make food in the cities relatively expensive. In rural areas, subsistence hunting and gathering is an essential activity because imported food is prohibitively expensive. Although most small towns and villages i |
n Alaska lie along the coastline, the cost of importing food to remote villages can be high, because of the terrain and difficult road conditions, which change dramatically, due to varying climate and precipitation changes. The cost of transport can reach as high as 50 per pound 1.10kg or more in some remote areas, during the most difficult times, if these locations can be reached at all during such inclement weather and terrain conditions. The cost of delivering a of milk is about 3.50 in many villages where per capita income can be 20,000 or less. Fuel cost per gallon is routinely twenty to thirty cents higher than the contiguous United States average, with only Hawaii having higher prices.
Culture
Some of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Blueberry Festival and Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell. The Stikine River attracts the |
largest springtime concentration of American bald eagles in the world.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrates the rich heritage of Alaska's 11 cultural groups. Their purpose is to encourage crosscultural exchanges among all people and enhance selfesteem among Native people. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation promotes and markets Native art from all regions and cultures in the State, using the internet.
Music
Influences on music in Alaska include the traditional music of Alaska Natives as well as folk music brought by later immigrants from Russia and Europe. Prominent musicians from Alaska include singer Jewel, traditional Aleut flautist Mary Youngblood, folk singersongwriter Libby Roderick, Christian music singersongwriter Lincoln Brewster, metalpost hardcore band 36 Crazyfists and the groups Pamyua and Portugal. The Man.
There are many established music festivals in Alaska, including the Alaska Folk Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival the Anchorage Folk Festival, the Athabascan OldTime Fidd |
ling Festival, the Sitka Jazz Festival, and the Sitka Summer Music Festival. The most prominent orchestra in Alaska is the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, though the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Juneau Symphony are also notable. The Anchorage Opera is currently the state's only professional opera company, though there are several volunteer and semiprofessional organizations in the state as well.
The official state song of Alaska is "Alaska's Flag", which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.
Alaska in film and on television
Alaska's first independent picture entirely made in Alaska was The Chechahcos, produced by Alaskan businessman Austin E. Lathrop and filmed in and around Anchorage. Released in 1924 by the Alaska Moving Picture Corporation, it was the only film the company made.
One of the most prominent movies filmed in Alaska is MGM's EskimoMala The Magnificent, starring Alaska Native Ray Mala. In 1932, an expedition set out from MGM's studios in Hollywood to Alaska to film what wa |
s then billed as "The Biggest Picture Ever Made". Upon arriving in Alaska, they set up "Camp Hollywood" in Northwest Alaska, where they lived during the duration of the filming. Louis B. Mayer spared no expense in spite of the remote location, going so far as to hire the chef from the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to prepare meals.
When Eskimo premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York City, the studio received the largest amount of feedback in its history. Eskimo was critically acclaimed and released worldwide; as a result, Mala became an international movie star. Eskimo won the first Oscar for Best Film Editing at the Academy Awards, and showcased and preserved aspects of Inupiat culture on film.
The 1983 Disney movie Never Cry Wolf was at least partially shot in Alaska. The 1991 film White Fang, based on Jack London's 1906 novel and starring Ethan Hawke, was filmed in and around Haines. Steven Seagal's 1994 On Deadly Ground, starring Michael Caine, was filmed in part at the Worthington Glacier near Valdez |
. The 1999 John Sayles film Limbo, starring David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Kris Kristofferson, was filmed in Juneau.
The psychological thriller Insomnia, starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams, was shot in Canada, but was set in Alaska. The 2007 film directed by Sean Penn, Into The Wild, was partially filmed and set in Alaska. The film, which is based on the novel of the same name, follows the adventures of Christopher McCandless, who died in a remote abandoned bus along the Stampede Trail west of Healy in 1992.
Many films and television shows set in Alaska are not filmed there; for example, Northern Exposure, set in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, was filmed in Roslyn, Washington. The 2007 horror feature 30 Days of Night is set in Barrow, Alaska, but was filmed in New Zealand.
Many reality television shows are filmed in Alaska. In 2011, the Anchorage Daily News found ten set in the state.
Public health and public safety
The Alaska State Troopers are Alaska's statewide police for |
ce. They have a long and storied history, but were not an official organization until 1941. Before the force was officially organized, law enforcement in Alaska was handled by various federal agencies. Larger towns usually have their own local police and some villages rely on "Public Safety Officers" who have police training but do not carry firearms. In much of the state, the troopers serve as the only police force available. In addition to enforcing traffic and criminal law, wildlife Troopers enforce hunting and fishing regulations. Due to the varied terrain and wide scope of the Troopers' duties, they employ a wide variety of land, air, and water patrol vehicles.
Many rural communities in Alaska are considered "dry", having outlawed the importation of alcoholic beverages. Suicide rates for rural residents are higher than urban.
Domestic abuse and other violent crimes are also at high levels in the state; this is in part linked to alcohol abuse. Alaska has the highest rate of sexual assault in the nation, |
especially in rural areas. The average age of sexually assaulted victims is 16 years old. In four out of five cases, the suspects were relatives, friends or acquaintances.
Education
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development administers many school districts in Alaska. In addition, the state operates a boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, and provides partial funding for other boarding schools, including Nenana Student Living Center in Nenana and The Galena Interior Learning Academy in Galena.
There are more than a dozen colleges and universities in Alaska. Accredited universities in Alaska include the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Southeast, and Alaska Pacific University. Alaska is the only state that has no institutions that are part of NCAA Division I.
The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development operates AVTEC, Alaska's Institute of Technology. Campuses in Seward and Anchorage offer oneweek to 11month tra |
ining programs in areas as diverse as Information Technology, Welding, Nursing, and Mechanics.
Alaska has had a problem with a "brain drain". Many of its young people, including most of the highest academic achievers, leave the state after high school graduation and do not return. , Alaska did not have a law school or medical school. The University of Alaska has attempted to combat this by offering partial fouryear scholarships to the top 10 of Alaska high school graduates, via the Alaska Scholars Program.
Beginning in 1998, schools in rural Alaska must have at least 10 students to retain funding from the state, and campuses not meeting the number close. This was due to the loss in oil revenues that previously propped up smaller rural schools. In 2015, there was a proposal to raise that minimum to 25, but legislators in the state largely did not agree.
Transportation
Roads
Alaska has few road connections compared to the rest of the U.S. The state's road system, covering a relatively small area of the sta |
te, linking the central population centers and the Alaska Highway, the principal route out of the state through Canada. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, only a car ferry; this has spurred debate over decades about moving the capital to a city on the road system, or building a road connection from Haines. The western part of Alaska has no road system connecting the communities with the rest of Alaska.
The Interstate Highways in Alaska consists of a total of . One unique feature of the Alaska Highway system is the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, an active Alaska Railroad tunnel recently upgraded to provide a paved roadway link with the isolated community of Whittier on Prince William Sound to the Seward Highway about southeast of Anchorage at Portage. At , the tunnel was the longest road tunnel in North America until 2007. The tunnel is the longest combination road and rail tunnel in North America.
Rail
Built around 1915, the Alaska Railroad ARR played a key role in the development of A |
laska through the 20th century. It links north Pacific shipping through providing critical infrastructure with tracks that run from Seward to Interior Alaska by way of South Central Alaska, passing through Anchorage, Eklutna, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Denali, and Fairbanks, with spurs to Whittier, Palmer and North Pole. The cities, towns, villages, and region served by ARR tracks are known statewide as "The Railbelt". In recent years, the everimproving paved highway system began to eclipse the railroad's importance in Alaska's economy.
The railroad played a vital role in Alaska's development, moving freight into Alaska while transporting natural resources southward, such as coal from the Usibelli coal mine near Healy to Seward and gravel from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage. It is well known for its summertime tour passenger service.
The Alaska Railroad was one of the last railroads in North America to use cabooses in regular service and still uses them on some gravel trains. It continues to offer one of the la |
st flag stop routes in the country. A stretch of about of track along an area north of Talkeetna remains inaccessible by road; the railroad provides the only transportation to rural homes and cabins in the area. Until construction of the Parks Highway in the 1970s, the railroad provided the only land access to most of the region along its entire route.
In northern Southeast Alaska, the White Pass and Yukon Route also partly runs through the state from Skagway northwards into Canada British Columbia and Yukon Territory, crossing the border at White Pass Summit. This line is now mainly used by tourists, often arriving by cruise liner at Skagway. It was featured in the 1983 BBC television series Great Little Railways.
The Alaska Rail network is not connected to Outside. The nearest link to the North American railway network is the northwest terminus of the Canadian National Railway at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, several hundred miles to the southeast. In 2000, the U.S. Congress authorized 6 million to st |
udy the feasibility of a rail link between Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48.
Some private companies provides car float service between Whittier and Seattle.
Marine transport
Many cities, towns and villages in the state do not have road or highway access; the only modes of access involve travel by air, river, or the sea.
Alaska's welldeveloped stateowned ferry system known as the Alaska Marine Highway serves the cities of southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Peninsula. The ferries transport vehicles as well as passengers. The system also operates a ferry service from Bellingham, Washington and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in Canada through the Inside Passage to Skagway. The InterIsland Ferry Authority also serves as an important marine link for many communities in the Prince of Wales Island region of Southeast and works in concert with the Alaska Marine Highway.
In recent years, cruise lines have created a summertime tourism market, mainly connecting the Pacific Northwest to Southeast Alaska and, |
to a lesser degree, towns along Alaska's gulf coast. The population of Ketchikan for example fluctuates dramatically on many daysup to four large cruise ships can dock there at the same time.
Air transport
Cities not served by road, sea, or river can be reached only by air, foot, dogsled, or snowmachine, accounting for Alaska's extremely well developed bush air servicesan Alaskan novelty. Anchorage and, to a lesser extent Fairbanks, is served by many major airlines. Because of limited highway access, air travel remains the most efficient form of transportation in and out of the state. Anchorage recently completed extensive remodeling and construction at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to help accommodate the upsurge in tourism in 20122013, Alaska received almost two million visitors.
Regular flights to most villages and towns within the state that are commercially viable are challenging to provide, so they are heavily subsidized by the federal government through the Essential Air Service progra |
m. Alaska Airlines is the only major airline offering instate travel with jet service sometimes in combination cargo and passenger Boeing 737400s from Anchorage and Fairbanks to regional hubs like Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Kodiak, and other larger communities as well as to major Southeast and Alaska Peninsula communities.
The bulk of remaining commercial flight offerings come from small regional commuter airlines such as Ravn Alaska, PenAir, and Frontier Flying Service. The smallest towns and villages must rely on scheduled or chartered bush flying services using general aviation aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan, the most popular aircraft in use in the state. Much of this service can be attributed to the Alaska bypass mail program which subsidizes bulk mail delivery to Alaskan rural communities. The program requires 70 of that subsidy to go to carriers who offer passenger service to the communities.
Many communities have small air taxi services. These operations originated from the demand for c |
ustomized transport to remote areas. Perhaps the most quintessentially Alaskan plane is the bush seaplane. The world's busiest seaplane base is Lake Hood, located next to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, where flights bound for remote villages without an airstrip carry passengers, cargo, and many items from stores and warehouse clubs.
In 2006, Alaska had the highest number of pilots per capita of any U.S. state. In Alaska there are 8,795 active pilot certificates as of 2020.
Of these, there are 2,507 Private, 1,496 Commercial, 2,180 Airline Transport, and 2,239 Student. There are also 3,987 pilots with a Instrument rating and 1,511 Flight Instructors.
Other transport
Another Alaskan transportation method is the dogsled. In modern times that is, any time after the midlate 1920s, dog mushing is more of a sport than a true means of transportation. Various races are held around the state, but the best known is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a trail from Anchorage to Nome although the distance |
varies from year to year, the official distance is set at . The race commemorates the famous 1925 serum run to Nome in which mushers and dogs like Togo and Balto took muchneeded medicine to the diphtheriastricken community of Nome when all other means of transportation had failed. Mushers from all over the world come to Anchorage each March to compete for cash, prizes, and prestige. The "Serum Run" is another sled dog race that more accurately follows the route of the famous 1925 relay, leaving from the community of Nenana southwest of Fairbanks to Nome.
In areas not served by road or rail, primary transportation in summer is by allterrain vehicle and in winter by snowmobile or "snow machine", as it is commonly referred to in Alaska.
Data transport
Alaska's internet and other data transport systems are provided largely through the two major telecommunications companies GCI and Alaska Communications. GCI owns and operates what it calls the Alaska United Fiber Optic system and, as of late 2011, Alaska Commu |
nications advertised that it has "two fiber optic paths to the lower 48 and two more across Alaska. In January 2011, it was reported that a 1 billion project to connect Asia and rural Alaska was being planned, aided in part by 350 million in stimulus from the federal government.
Law and government
State government
Like all other U.S. states, Alaska is governed as a republic, with three branches of government an executive branch consisting of the governor of Alaska and his or her appointees which head executive departments; a legislative branch consisting of the Alaska House of Representatives and Alaska Senate; and a judicial branch consisting of the Alaska Supreme Court and lower courts.
The state of Alaska employs approximately 16,000 people statewide.
The Alaska Legislature consists of a 40member House of Representatives and a 20member Senate. Senators serve fouryear terms and House members two. The governor of Alaska serves fouryear terms. The lieutenant governor runs separately from the governor in |
the primaries, but during the general election, the nominee for governor and nominee for lieutenant governor run together on the same ticket.
Alaska's court system has four levels the Alaska Supreme Court, the Alaska Court of Appeals, the superior courts and the district courts. The superior and district courts are trial courts. Superior courts are courts of general jurisdiction, while district courts hear only certain types of cases, including misdemeanor criminal cases and civil cases valued up to 100,000.
The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals are appellate courts. The Court of Appeals is required to hear appeals from certain lowercourt decisions, including those regarding criminal prosecutions, juvenile delinquency, and habeas corpus. The Supreme Court hears civil appeals and may in its discretion hear criminal appeals.
State politics
Although in its early years of statehood Alaska was a Democratic state, since the early 1970s it has been characterized as Republicanleaning. Local political communi |
ties have often worked on issues related to land use development, fishing, tourism, and individual rights. Alaska Natives, while organized in and around their communities, have been active within the Native corporations. These have been given ownership over large tracts of land, which require stewardship.
Alaska was formerly the only state in which possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in one's home was completely legal under state law, though the federal law remains in force.
The state has an independence movement favoring a vote on secession from the United States, with the Alaskan Independence Party.
Six Republicans and four Democrats have served as governor of Alaska. In addition, Republican governor Wally Hickel was elected to the office for a second term in 1990 after leaving the Republican party and briefly joining the Alaskan Independence Party ticket just long enough to be reelected. He officially rejoined the Republican party in 1994.
Alaska's voter initiative making marijuana legal took |
effect on February 24, 2015, placing Alaska alongside Colorado and Washington as the first three U.S. states where recreational marijuana is legal. The new law means people over 21 can consume small amounts of cannabis. The first legal marijuana store opened in Valdez in October 2016.
Voter registration
Taxes
To finance state government operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues and federal subsidies. This allows it to have the lowest individual tax burden in the United States. It is one of five states with no sales tax, one of seven states with no individual income tax, andalong with New Hampshireone of two that has neither. The Department of Revenue Tax Division reports regularly on the state's revenue sources. The Department also issues an annual summary of its operations, including new state laws that directly affect the tax division. In 2014, the Tax Foundation ranked Alaska as having the fourth most "business friendly" tax policy, behind only Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada.
While |
Alaska has no state sales tax, 89 municipalities collect a local sales tax, from 1.0 to 7.5, typically 35. Other local taxes levied include raw fish taxes, hotel, motel, and bedandbreakfast 'bed' taxes, severance taxes, liquor and tobacco taxes, gaming pull tabs taxes, tire taxes and fuel transfer taxes. A part of the revenue collected from certain state taxes and license fees such as petroleum, aviation motor fuel, telephone cooperative is shared with municipalities in Alaska.
The fall in oil prices after the fracking boom in the early 2010s has decimated Alaska's state treasury, which has historically received about 85 percent of its revenue from taxes and fees imposed on oil and gas companies. The state government has had to drastically reduce its budget, and has brought its budget shortfall from over 2 billion in 2016 to under 500 million by 2018. In 2020, Alaska's state government budget was 4.8 billion, while projected government revenues were only 4.5 billion.
Federal politics
Alaska regularly supp |
orts Republicans in presidential elections and has done so since statehood. Republicans have won the state's electoral college votes in all but one election that it has participated in 1964. No state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate fewer times. Alaska was carried by Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson during his landslide election in 1964, while the 1960 and 1968 elections were close. Since 1972, however, Republicans have carried the state by large margins. In 2008, Republican John McCain defeated Democrat Barack Obama in Alaska, 59.49 to 37.83. McCain's running mate was Sarah Palin, the state's governor and the first Alaskan on a major party ticket. Obama lost Alaska again in 2012, but he captured 40 of the state's vote in that election, making him the first Democrat to do so since 1968.
The Alaska Bush, central Juneau, midtown and downtown Anchorage, and the areas surrounding the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and Ester have been strongholds of the Democratic Party. The MatanuskaS |
usitna Borough, the majority of Fairbanks including North Pole and the military base, and South Anchorage typically have the strongest Republican showing.
Elections
In a 2020 study, Alaska was ranked as the 15th hardest state for citizens to vote in.
In the 2020 election cycle, Alaskan voters approved Ballot Measure 2. The measure passed by a margin of 1.1, or about 4,000 votes. The measure requires campaigns to disclose the original source and any intermediaries for campaign contributions over 2,000. The measure establishes nonpartisan blanket primaries for statewide elections like in Washington state and California and rankedchoice voting like in Maine. Alaska is the third state with jungle primaries for all statewide races, the second state with ranked voting, and the only state with both.
The first race to use the new system of elections will be the 2022 Senate election in which Lisa Murkowski will run for reelection.
See also
Index of Alaskarelated articles
Outline of Alaska
Notes
References
E |
xternal links
Alaska's Digital Archives
Alaska InterTribal Council
Who OwnsManages Alaska? map
Carl J. Sacarlasen Diary Extracts at Dartmouth College Library
M.E. Diemer Alaska Photographs at Dartmouth College Library
Alfred Hulse Brooks Photographs and Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
U.S. federal government
Alaska State Guide from the Library of Congress
Energy Environmental Data for Alaska
USGS realtime, geographic, and other scientific resources of Alaska
US Census Bureau
Alaska State Facts
Alaska Statehood Subject Guide from the Eisenhower Presidential Library
Alaska Statehood documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
Alaska state government
State of Alaska website
Alaska State Databases
Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Recorder's Office
Arctic Ocean
Former Russian colonies
States and territories established in 1959
States of the United States
States of the West Coast of the United States
U.S. states |
with multiple time zones
1959 establishments in the United States
Western United States
Northern America
Enclaves and exclaves
Beringia |
Agriculture is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep, and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on largescale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture.
The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels and raw materials such as rubber. Food classes include cereals grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, meat, milk, eggs and fungi. Over onethird of the world's workers are employed in ag |
riculture, second only to the service sector, although in recent decades, the global trend of a decreasing number of agricultural workers continues, especially in developing countries where smallholding is being overtaken by industrial agriculture and mechanization that brings an enormous crop yield increase.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, but causing ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to global warming, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and growth hormones in industrial meat production. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation and global warming, all of |
which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some are banned in certain countries.
Etymology and scope
The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin , from 'field' and 'cultivation' or 'growing'. While agriculture usually refers to human activities, certain species of ant, termite and beetle have been cultivating crops for up to 60 million years. Agriculture is defined with varying scopes, in its broadest sense using natural resources to "produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services". Thus defined, it includes arable farming, horticulture, animal husbandry and forestry, but horticulture and forestry are in practice often excluded.
History
Origins
The development of agriculture enabled the human population to grow many times larger than could be sustained by hunting and gathering. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, a |
nd included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centres of origin. Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC with the earliest known cultivation from 5,700 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan some 10,500 years ago. Pig production emerged in Eurasia, including Europe, East Asia and Southwest Asia, where wild boar were first domesticated about 10,500 years ago. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticate |
d in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was bred into maize by 6,000 years ago.
Scholars have offered multiple hypotheses to explain the historical origins of agriculture. Studies of the transition from huntergatherer to agricultural societies indicate an initial period of intensification and increasing sedentism; examples are the Natufian culture in the Levant, and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China. Then, wild stands that had previously been harvested started to be planted, and gradually came to be domesticated.
Civilizations
In Eurasia, the Sumerians started to live in villages from about 8,000 BC, relying on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a canal system for irrigation. Ploughs appear in pictographs around 3,000 BC; seedploughs around 2,300 BC. Farmers grew wheat, barley, vegetables such as lentil |
s and onions, and fruits including dates, grapes, and figs. Ancient Egyptian agriculture relied on the Nile River and its seasonal flooding. Farming started in the predynastic period at the end of the Paleolithic, after 10,000 BC. Staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus. In India, wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated by 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats. Cattle, sheep and goats were domesticated in Mehrgarh culture by 8,0006,000 BC. Cotton was cultivated by the 5th4th millennium BC. Archeological evidence indicates an animaldrawn plough from 2,500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
In China, from the 5th century BC there was a nationwide granary system and widespread silk farming. Waterpowered grain mills were in use by the 1st century BC, followed by irrigation. By the late 2nd century, heavy ploughs had been developed with iron ploughshares and mouldboards. These spread westwards across Eurasia. Asian rice was domesticated |
8,20013,500 years ago depending on the molecular clock estimate that is used on the Pearl River in southern China with a single genetic origin from the wild rice Oryza rufipogon. In Greece and Rome, the major cereals were wheat, emmer, and barley, alongside vegetables including peas, beans, and olives. Sheep and goats were kept mainly for dairy products.
In the Americas, crops domesticated in Mesoamerica apart from teosinte include squash, beans, and cacao. Cocoa was being domesticated by the Mayo Chinchipe of the upper Amazon around 3,000 BC.
The turkey was probably domesticated in Mexico or the American Southwest. The Aztecs developed irrigation systems, formed terraced hillsides, fertilized their soil, and developed chinampas or artificial islands. The Mayas used extensive canal and raised field systems to farm swampland from 400 BC. Coca was domesticated in the Andes, as were the peanut, tomato, tobacco, and pineapple. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Animals including llamas, alpacas, and |
guinea pigs were domesticated there. In North America, the indigenous people of the East domesticated crops such as sunflower, tobacco, squash and Chenopodium. Wild foods including wild rice and maple sugar were harvested. The domesticated strawberry is a hybrid of a Chilean and a North American species, developed by breeding in Europe and North America. The indigenous people of the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest practiced forest gardening and firestick farming. The natives controlled fire on a regional scale to create a lowintensity fire ecology that sustained a lowdensity agriculture in loose rotation; a sort of "wild" permaculture. A system of companion planting called the Three Sisters was developed in North America. The three crops were winter squash, maize, and climbing beans.
Indigenous Australians, long supposed to have been nomadic huntergatherers, practised systematic burning, possibly to enhance natural productivity in firestick farming. Scholars have pointed out that huntergatherers need a p |
roductive environment to support gathering without cultivation. Because the forests of New Guinea have few food plants, early humans may have used "selective burning" to increase the productivity of the wild karuka fruit trees to support the huntergatherer way of life.
The Gunditjmara and other groups developed eel farming and fish trapping systems from some 5,000 years ago. There is evidence of 'intensification' across the whole continent over that period. In two regions of Australia, the central west coast and eastern central, early farmers cultivated yams, native millet, and bush onions, possibly in permanent settlements.
Revolution
In the Middle Ages, both in Europe and in the Islamic world, agriculture transformed with improved techniques and the diffusion of crop plants, including the introduction of sugar, rice, cotton and fruit trees such as the orange to Europe by way of AlAndalus.
After 1492 the Columbian exchange brought New World crops such as maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and man |
ioc to Europe, and Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice and turnips, and livestock including horses, cattle, sheep and goats to the Americas.
Irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers advanced from the 17th century with the British Agricultural Revolution, allowing global population to rise significantly. Since 1900 agriculture in developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as mechanization replaces human labor, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding. The HaberBosch method allowed the synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing crop yields and sustaining a further increase in global population. Modern agriculture has raised or encountered ecological, political, and economic issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies, leading to alternative approaches such as the organic movement.
Types
Pastoralism involves |
managing domesticated animals. In nomadic pastoralism, herds of livestock are moved from place to place in search of pasture, fodder, and water. This type of farming is practised in arid and semiarid regions of Sahara, Central Asia and some parts of India.
In shifting cultivation, a small area of forest is cleared by cutting and burning the trees. The cleared land is used for growing crops for a few years until the soil becomes too infertile, and the area is abandoned. Another patch of land is selected and the process is repeated. This type of farming is practiced mainly in areas with abundant rainfall where the forest regenerates quickly. This practice is used in Northeast India, Southeast Asia, and the Amazon Basin.
Subsistence farming is practiced to satisfy family or local needs alone, with little left over for transport elsewhere. It is intensively practiced in Monsoon Asia and SouthEast Asia. An estimated 2.5 billion subsistence farmers worked in 2018, cultivating about 60 of the earth's arable land. |
Intensive farming is cultivation to maximise productivity, with a low fallow ratio and a high use of inputs water, fertilizer, pesticide and automation. It is practiced mainly in developed countries.
Contemporary agriculture
Status
From the twentieth century, intensive agriculture increased productivity. It substituted synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for labour, but caused increased water pollution, and often involved farm subsidies. In recent years there has been a backlash against the environmental effects of conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic, regenerative, and sustainable agriculture movements. One of the major forces behind this movement has been the European Union, which first certified organic food in 1991 and began reform of its Common Agricultural Policy CAP in 2005 to phase out commoditylinked farm subsidies, also known as decoupling. The growth of organic farming has renewed research in alternative technologies such as integrated pest management, selective breeding, and c |
ontrolledenvironment agriculture. Recent mainstream technological developments include genetically modified food. Demand for nonfood biofuel crops, development of former farm lands, rising transportation costs, climate change, growing consumer demand in China and India, and population growth, are threatening food security in many parts of the world. The International Fund for Agricultural Development posits that an increase in smallholder agriculture may be part of the solution to concerns about food prices and overall food security, given the favorable experience of Vietnam. Soil degradation and diseases such as stem rust are major concerns globally; approximately 40 of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. By 2015, the agricultural output of China was the largest in the world, followed by the European Union, India and the United States. Economists measure the total factor productivity of agriculture and by this measure agriculture in the United States is roughly 1.7 times more productive than |
it was in 1948.
Workforce
Following the threesector theory, the number of people employed in agriculture and other primary activities such as fishing can be more than 80 in the least developed countries, and less than 2 in the most highly developed countries. Since the Industrial Revolution, many countries have made the transition to developed economies, and the proportion of people working in agriculture has steadily fallen. During the 16th century in Europe, for example, between 55 and 75 of the population was engaged in agriculture; by the 19th century, this had dropped to between 35 and 65. In the same countries today, the figure is less than 10.
At the start of the 21st century, some one billion people, or over 13 of the available work force, were employed in agriculture. It constitutes approximately 70 of the global employment of children, and in many countries employs the largest percentage of women of any industry. The service sector overtook the agricultural sector as the largest global employer |
in 2007.
Safety
Agriculture, specifically farming, remains a hazardous industry, and farmers worldwide remain at high risk of workrelated injuries, lung disease, noiseinduced hearing loss, skin diseases, as well as certain cancers related to chemical use and prolonged sun exposure. On industrialized farms, injuries frequently involve the use of agricultural machinery, and a common cause of fatal agricultural injuries in developed countries is tractor rollovers. Pesticides and other chemicals used in farming can be hazardous to worker health, and workers exposed to pesticides may experience illness or have children with birth defects. As an industry in which families commonly share in work and live on the farm itself, entire families can be at risk for injuries, illness, and death. Ages 06 May be an especially vulnerable population in agriculture; common causes of fatal injuries among young farm workers include drowning, machinery and motor accidents, including with allterrain vehicles.
The International L |
abour Organization considers agriculture "one of the most hazardous of all economic sectors". It estimates that the annual workrelated death toll among agricultural employees is at least 170,000, twice the average rate of other jobs. In addition, incidences of death, injury and illness related to agricultural activities often go unreported. The organization has developed the Safety and Health in Agriculture Convention, 2001, which covers the range of risks in the agriculture occupation, the prevention of these risks and the role that individuals and organizations engaged in agriculture should play.
In the United States, agriculture has been identified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health as a priority industry sector in the National Occupational Research Agenda to identify and provide intervention strategies for occupational health and safety issues.
In the European Union, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has issued guidelines on implementing health and safety directi |
ves in agriculture, livestock farming, horticulture, and forestry. The Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America ASHCA also holds a yearly summit to discuss safety.
Production
Overall production varies by country as listed.
Crop cultivation systems
Cropping systems vary among farms depending on the available resources and constraints; geography and climate of the farm; government policy; economic, social and political pressures; and the philosophy and culture of the farmer.
Shifting cultivation or slash and burn is a system in which forests are burnt, releasing nutrients to support cultivation of annual and then perennial crops for a period of several years. Then the plot is left fallow to regrow forest, and the farmer moves to a new plot, returning after many more years 1020. This fallow period is shortened if population density grows, requiring the input of nutrients fertilizer or manure and some manual pest control. Annual cultivation is the next phase of intensity in which there is no fallo |
w period. This requires even greater nutrient and pest control inputs.
Further industrialization led to the use of monocultures, when one cultivar is planted on a large acreage. Because of the low biodiversity, nutrient use is uniform and pests tend to build up, necessitating the greater use of pesticides and fertilizers. Multiple cropping, in which several crops are grown sequentially in one year, and intercropping, when several crops are grown at the same time, are other kinds of annual cropping systems known as polycultures.
In subtropical and arid environments, the timing and extent of agriculture may be limited by rainfall, either not allowing multiple annual crops in a year, or requiring irrigation. In all of these environments perennial crops are grown coffee, chocolate and systems are practiced such as agroforestry. In temperate environments, where ecosystems were predominantly grassland or prairie, highly productive annual farming is the dominant agricultural system.
Important categories of food c |
rops include cereals, legumes, forage, fruits and vegetables. Natural fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Specific crops are cultivated in distinct growing regions throughout the world. Production is listed in millions of metric tons, based on FAO estimates.
Livestock production systems
Animal husbandry is the breeding and raising of animals for meat, milk, eggs, or wool, and for work and transport. Working animals, including horses, mules, oxen, water buffalo, camels, llamas, alpacas, donkeys, and dogs, have for centuries been used to help cultivate fields, harvest crops, wrangle other animals, and transport farm products to buyers.
Livestock production systems can be defined based on feed source, as grasslandbased, mixed, and landless. , 30 of Earth's ice and waterfree area was used for producing livestock, with the sector employing approximately 1.3 billion people. Between the 1960s and the 2000s, there was a significant increase in livestock production, both by numbers and by carcass wei |
ght, especially among beef, pigs and chickens, the latter of which had production increased by almost a factor of 10. Nonmeat animals, such as milk cows and eggproducing chickens, also showed significant production increases. Global cattle, sheep and goat populations are expected to continue to increase sharply through 2050. Aquaculture or fish farming, the production of fish for human consumption in confined operations, is one of the fastest growing sectors of food production, growing at an average of 9 a year between 1975 and 2007.
During the second half of the 20th century, producers using selective breeding focused on creating livestock breeds and crossbreeds that increased production, while mostly disregarding the need to preserve genetic diversity. This trend has led to a significant decrease in genetic diversity and resources among livestock breeds, leading to a corresponding decrease in disease resistance and local adaptations previously found among traditional breeds.
Grassland based livestock prod |
uction relies upon plant material such as shrubland, rangeland, and pastures for feeding ruminant animals. Outside nutrient inputs may be used, however manure is returned directly to the grassland as a major nutrient source. This system is particularly important in areas where crop production is not feasible because of climate or soil, representing 3040 million pastoralists. Mixed production systems use grassland, fodder crops and grain feed crops as feed for ruminant and monogastric one stomach; mainly chickens and pigs livestock. Manure is typically recycled in mixed systems as a fertilizer for crops.
Landless systems rely upon feed from outside the farm, representing the delinking of crop and livestock production found more prevalently in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. Synthetic fertilizers are more heavily relied upon for crop production and manure use becomes a challenge as well as a source for pollution. Industrialized countries use these operations to produce m |
uch of the global supplies of poultry and pork. Scientists estimate that 75 of the growth in livestock production between 2003 and 2030 will be in confined animal feeding operations, sometimes called factory farming. Much of this growth is happening in developing countries in Asia, with much smaller amounts of growth in Africa. Some of the practices used in commercial livestock production, including the usage of growth hormones, are controversial.
Production practices
Tillage is the practice of breaking up the soil with tools such as the plow or harrow to prepare for planting, for nutrient incorporation, or for pest control. Tillage varies in intensity from conventional to notill. It may improve productivity by warming the soil, incorporating fertilizer and controlling weeds, but also renders soil more prone to erosion, triggers the decomposition of organic matter releasing CO2, and reduces the abundance and diversity of soil organisms.
Pest control includes the management of weeds, insects, mites, and di |
seases. Chemical pesticides, biological biocontrol, mechanical tillage, and cultural practices are used. Cultural practices include crop rotation, culling, cover crops, intercropping, composting, avoidance, and resistance. Integrated pest management attempts to use all of these methods to keep pest populations below the number which would cause economic loss, and recommends pesticides as a last resort.
Nutrient management includes both the source of nutrient inputs for crop and livestock production, and the method of use of manure produced by livestock. Nutrient inputs can be chemical inorganic fertilizers, manure, green manure, compost and minerals. Crop nutrient use may also be managed using cultural techniques such as crop rotation or a fallow period. Manure is used either by holding livestock where the feed crop is growing, such as in managed intensive rotational grazing, or by spreading either dry or liquid formulations of manure on cropland or pastures.
Water management is needed where rainfall is ins |
ufficient or variable, which occurs to some degree in most regions of the world. Some farmers use irrigation to supplement rainfall. In other areas such as the Great Plains in the U.S. and Canada, farmers use a fallow year to conserve soil moisture to use for growing a crop in the following year. Agriculture represents 70 of freshwater use worldwide.
According to a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, agricultural technologies will have the greatest impact on food production if adopted in combination with each other; using a model that assessed how eleven technologies could impact agricultural productivity, food security and trade by 2050, the International Food Policy Research Institute found that the number of people at risk from hunger could be reduced by as much as 40 and food prices could be reduced by almost half.
Payment for ecosystem services is a method of providing additional incentives to encourage farmers to conserve some aspects of the environment. Measures might include |
paying for reforestation upstream of a city, to improve the supply of fresh water.
Crop alteration and biotechnology
Plant breeding
Crop alteration has been practiced by humankind for thousands of years, since the beginning of civilization. Altering crops through breeding practices changes the genetic makeup of a plant to develop crops with more beneficial characteristics for humans, for example, larger fruits or seeds, droughttolerance, or resistance to pests. Significant advances in plant breeding ensued after the work of geneticist Gregor Mendel. His work on dominant and recessive alleles, although initially largely ignored for almost 50 years, gave plant breeders a better understanding of genetics and breeding techniques. Crop breeding includes techniques such as plant selection with desirable traits, selfpollination and crosspollination, and molecular techniques that genetically modify the organism.
Domestication of plants has, over the centuries increased yield, improved disease resistance and drou |
ght tolerance, eased harvest and improved the taste and nutritional value of crop plants. Careful selection and breeding have had enormous effects on the characteristics of crop plants. Plant selection and breeding in the 1920s and 1930s improved pasture grasses and clover in New Zealand. Extensive Xray and ultraviolet induced mutagenesis efforts i.e. primitive genetic engineering during the 1950s produced the modern commercial varieties of grains such as wheat, corn maize and barley.
The Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to sharply increase yield by creating "highyielding varieties". For example, average yields of corn maize in the US have increased from around 2.5 tons per hectare tha 40 bushels per acre in 1900 to about 9.4 tha 150 bushels per acre in 2001. Similarly, worldwide average wheat yields have increased from less than 1 tha in 1900 to more than 2.5 tha in 1990. South American average wheat yields are around 2 tha, African under 1 tha, and Egypt and Arabia up to 3 |
.5 to 4 tha with irrigation. In contrast, the average wheat yield in countries such as France is over 8 tha. Variations in yields are due mainly to variation in climate, genetics, and the level of intensive farming techniques use of fertilizers, chemical pest control, growth control to avoid lodging.
Genetic engineering
Genetically modified organisms GMO are organisms whose genetic material has been altered by genetic engineering techniques generally known as recombinant DNA technology. Genetic engineering has expanded the genes available to breeders to use in creating desired germlines for new crops. Increased durability, nutritional content, insect and virus resistance and herbicide tolerance are a few of the attributes bred into crops through genetic engineering. For some, GMO crops cause food safety and food labeling concerns. Numerous countries have placed restrictions on the production, import or use of GMO foods and crops. Currently a global treaty, the Biosafety Protocol, regulates the trade of GMO |
s. There is ongoing discussion regarding the labeling of foods made from GMOs, and while the EU currently requires all GMO foods to be labeled, the US does not.
Herbicideresistant seed has a gene implanted into its genome that allows the plants to tolerate exposure to herbicides, including glyphosate. These seeds allow the farmer to grow a crop that can be sprayed with herbicides to control weeds without harming the resistant crop. Herbicidetolerant crops are used by farmers worldwide. With the increasing use of herbicidetolerant crops, comes an increase in the use of glyphosatebased herbicide sprays. In some areas glyphosate resistant weeds have developed, causing farmers to switch to other herbicides. Some studies also link widespread glyphosate usage to iron deficiencies in some crops, which is both a crop production and a nutritional quality concern, with potential economic and health implications.
Other GMO crops used by growers include insectresistant crops, which have a gene from the soil bacterium B |
acillus thuringiensis Bt, which produces a toxin specific to insects. These crops resist damage by insects. Some believe that similar or better pestresistance traits can be acquired through traditional breeding practices, and resistance to various pests can be gained through hybridization or crosspollination with wild species. In some cases, wild species are the primary source of resistance traits; some tomato cultivars that have gained resistance to at least 19 diseases did so through crossing with wild populations of tomatoes.
Environmental impact
Effects and costs
Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation and global warming, which cause decrease in crop yield. Agriculture is one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures, particularly habitat change, climate change, water use and toxic emissions. Agriculture is the main source of toxins released into the environment, including insecticides, espec |
ially those used on cotton. The 2011 UNEP Green Economy report stated that agricultural operations produced some 13 per cent of anthropogenic global greenhouse gas emissions. This includes gases from the use of inorganic fertilizers, agrochemical pesticides, and herbicides, as well as fossil fuelenergy inputs.
Agriculture imposes multiple external costs upon society through effects such as pesticide damage to nature especially herbicides and insecticides, nutrient runoff, excessive water usage, and loss of natural environment. A 2000 assessment of agriculture in the UK determined total external costs for 1996 of 2,343 million, or 208 per hectare. A 2005 analysis of these costs in the US concluded that cropland imposes approximately 5 to 16 billion 30 to 96 per hectare, while livestock production imposes 714 million. Both studies, which focused solely on the fiscal impacts, concluded that more should be done to internalize external costs. Neither included subsidies in their analysis, but they noted that subs |
idies also influence the cost of agriculture to society.
Agriculture seeks to increase yield and to reduce costs. Yield increases with inputs such as fertilisers and removal of pathogens, predators, and competitors such as weeds. Costs decrease with increasing scale of farm units, such as making fields larger; this means removing hedges, ditches and other areas of habitat. Pesticides kill insects, plants and fungi. These and other measures have cut biodiversity to very low levels on intensively farmed land. Effective yields fall with onfarm losses, which may be caused by poor production practices during harvesting, handling, and storage.
Livestock issues
A senior UN official, Henning Steinfeld, said that "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems". Livestock production occupies 70 of all land used for agriculture, or 30 of the land surface of the planet. It is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, responsible for 18 of the world's green |
house gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents. By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5 of the CO2. It produces 65 of humanrelated nitrous oxide which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2 and 37 of all humaninduced methane which is 23 times as warming as CO2. It also generates 64 of the ammonia emission. Livestock expansion is cited as a key factor driving deforestation; in the Amazon basin 70 of previously forested area is now occupied by pastures and the remainder used for feedcrops. Through deforestation and land degradation, livestock is also driving reductions in biodiversity. Furthermore, the UNEP states that "methane emissions from global livestock are projected to increase by 60 per cent by 2030 under current practices and consumption patterns."
Land and water issues
Land transformation, the use of land to yield goods and services, is the most substantial way humans alter the Earth's ecosystems, and is the driving force causing biodiversity loss. Estimates of the amount of lan |
d transformed by humans vary from 39 to 50. Land degradation, the longterm decline in ecosystem function and productivity, is estimated to be occurring on 24 of land worldwide, with cropland overrepresented. Land management is the driving factor behind degradation; 1.5 billion people rely upon the degrading land. Degradation can be through deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, mineral depletion, acidification, or salinization.
Eutrophication, excessive nutrient enrichment in aquatic ecosystems resulting in algal blooms and anoxia, leads to fish kills, loss of biodiversity, and renders water unfit for drinking and other industrial uses. Excessive fertilization and manure application to cropland, as well as high livestock stocking densities cause nutrient mainly nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and leaching from agricultural land. These nutrients are major nonpoint pollutants contributing to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems and pollution of groundwater, with harmful effects on human populations. Fert |
ilisers also reduce terrestrial biodiversity by increasing competition for light, favouring those species that are able to benefit from the added nutrients.
Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of withdrawals of freshwater resources. Agriculture is a major draw on water from aquifers, and currently draws from those underground water sources at an unsustainable rate. It is long known that aquifers in areas as diverse as northern China, the Upper Ganges and the western US are being depleted, and new research extends these problems to aquifers in Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Increasing pressure is being placed on water resources by industry and urban areas, meaning that water scarcity is increasing and agriculture is facing the challenge of producing more food for the world's growing population with reduced water resources. Agricultural water usage can also cause major environmental problems, including the destruction of natural wetlands, the spread of waterborne diseases, and land degradation through salinizat |
ion and waterlogging, when irrigation is performed incorrectly.
Pesticides
Pesticide use has increased since 1950 to 2.5million short tons annually worldwide, yet crop loss from pests has remained relatively constant. The World Health Organization estimated in 1992 that three million pesticide poisonings occur annually, causing 220,000 deaths. Pesticides select for pesticide resistance in the pest population, leading to a condition termed the "pesticide treadmill" in which pest resistance warrants the development of a new pesticide.
An alternative argument is that the way to "save the environment" and prevent famine is by using pesticides and intensive high yield farming, a view exemplified by a quote heading the Center for Global Food Issues website 'Growing more per acre leaves more land for nature'. However, critics argue that a tradeoff between the environment and a need for food is not inevitable, and that pesticides simply replace good agronomic practices such as crop rotation. The Pushpull agricult |
ural pest management technique involves intercropping, using plant aromas to repel pests from crops push and to lure them to a place from which they can then be removed pull.
Climate change
Climate change and agriculture are interrelated on a global scale. Global warming affects agriculture through changes in average temperatures, rainfall, and weather extremes like storms and heat waves; changes in pests and diseases; changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and groundlevel ozone concentrations; changes in the nutritional quality of some foods; and changes in sea level. Global warming is already affecting agriculture, with effects unevenly distributed across the world. Future climate change will probably negatively affect crop production in low latitude countries, while effects in northern latitudes may be positive or negative. Global warming will probably increase the risk of food insecurity for some vulnerable groups, such as the poor.
Animal husbandry is also responsible for greenhouse gas production of |
CO2 and a percentage of the world's methane, and future land infertility, and the displacement of wildlife. Agriculture contributes to climate change by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, and by the conversion of nonagricultural land such as forest for agricultural use. Agriculture, forestry and landuse change contributed around 20 to 25 to global annual emissions in 2010. A range of policies can reduce the risk of negative climate change impacts on agriculture, and greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector.
Sustainability
Current farming methods have resulted in overstretched water resources, high levels of erosion and reduced soil fertility. There is not enough water to continue farming using current practices; therefore how critical water, land, and ecosystem resources are used to boost crop yields must be reconsidered. A solution would be to give value to ecosystems, recognizing environmental and livelihood tradeoffs, and balancing the rights of a variety of users and interests. In |
equities that result when such measures are adopted would need to be addressed, such as the reallocation of water from poor to rich, the clearing of land to make way for more productive farmland, or the preservation of a wetland system that limits fishing rights.
Technological advancements help provide farmers with tools and resources to make farming more sustainable. Technology permits innovations like conservation tillage, a farming process which helps prevent land loss to erosion, reduces water pollution, and enhances carbon sequestration. Other potential practices include conservation agriculture, agroforestry, improved grazing, avoided grassland conversion, and biochar. Current monocrop farming practices in the United States preclude widespread adoption of sustainable practices, such as 23 crop rotations that incorporate grass or hay with annual crops, unless negative emission goals such as soil carbon sequestration become policy.
The International Food Policy Research Institute states that agricultura |
l technologies will have the greatest impact on food production if adopted in combination with each other; using a model that assessed how eleven technologies could impact agricultural productivity, food security and trade by 2050, it found that the number of people at risk from hunger could be reduced by as much as 40 and food prices could be reduced by almost half. The food demand of Earth's projected population, with current climate change predictions, could be satisfied by improvement of agricultural methods, expansion of agricultural areas, and a sustainabilityoriented consumer mindset.
Energy dependence
Since the 1940s, agricultural productivity has increased dramatically, due largely to the increased use of energyintensive mechanization, fertilizers and pesticides. The vast majority of this energy input comes from fossil fuel sources. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, with world grain production increasing significantly between 70 and 390 |
for wheat and 60 to 150 for rice, depending on geographic area as world population doubled. Heavy reliance on petrochemicals has raised concerns that oil shortages could increase costs and reduce agricultural output.
Industrialized agriculture depends on fossil fuels in two fundamental ways direct consumption on the farm and manufacture of inputs used on the farm. Direct consumption includes the use of lubricants and fuels to operate farm vehicles and machinery.
Indirect consumption includes the manufacture of fertilizers, pesticides, and farm machinery. In particular, the production of nitrogen fertilizer can account for over half of agricultural energy usage. Together, direct and indirect consumption by US farms accounts for about 2 of the nation's energy use. Direct and indirect energy consumption by U.S. farms peaked in 1979, and has since gradually declined. Food systems encompass not just agriculture but offfarm processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and foo |
drelated items. Agriculture accounts for less than onefifth of food system energy use in the US.
Disciplines
Agricultural economics
Agricultural economics is economics as it relates to the "production, distribution and consumption of agricultural goods and services". Combining agricultural production with general theories of marketing and business as a discipline of study began in the late 1800s, and grew significantly through the 20th century. Although the study of agricultural economics is relatively recent, major trends in agriculture have significantly affected national and international economies throughout history, ranging from tenant farmers and sharecropping in the postAmerican Civil War Southern United States to the European feudal system of manorialism. In the United States, and elsewhere, food costs attributed to food processing, distribution, and agricultural marketing, sometimes referred to as the value chain, have risen while the costs attributed to farming have declined. This is related to |
the greater efficiency of farming, combined with the increased level of value addition e.g. more highly processed products provided by the supply chain. Market concentration has increased in the sector as well, and although the total effect of the increased market concentration is likely increased efficiency, the changes redistribute economic surplus from producers farmers and consumers, and may have negative implications for rural communities.
National government policies can significantly change the economic marketplace for agricultural products, in the form of taxation, subsidies, tariffs and other measures. Since at least the 1960s, a combination of trade restrictions, exchange rate policies and subsidies have affected farmers in both the developing and the developed world. In the 1980s, nonsubsidized farmers in developing countries experienced adverse effects from national policies that created artificially low global prices for farm products. Between the mid1980s and the early 2000s, several internatio |
nal agreements limited agricultural tariffs, subsidies and other trade restrictions.
However, , there was still a significant amount of policydriven distortion in global agricultural product prices. The three agricultural products with the most trade distortion were sugar, milk and rice, mainly due to taxation. Among the oilseeds, sesame had the most taxation, but overall, feed grains and oilseeds had much lower levels of taxation than livestock products. Since the 1980s, policydriven distortions have seen a greater decrease among livestock products than crops during the worldwide reforms in agricultural policy. Despite this progress, certain crops, such as cotton, still see subsidies in developed countries artificially deflating global prices, causing hardship in developing countries with nonsubsidized farmers. Unprocessed commodities such as corn, soybeans, and cattle are generally graded to indicate quality, affecting the price the producer receives. Commodities are generally reported by production quanti |
ties, such as volume, number or weight.
Agricultural science
Agricultural science is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. It covers topics such as agronomy, plant breeding and genetics, plant pathology, crop modelling, soil science, entomology, production techniques and improvement, study of pests and their management, and study of adverse environmental effects such as soil degradation, waste management, and bioremediation.
The scientific study of agriculture began in the 18th century, when Johann Friedrich Mayer conducted experiments on the use of gypsum hydrated calcium sulphate as a fertilizer. Research became more systematic when in 1843, John Lawes and Henry Gilbert began a set of longterm agronomy field experiments at Rothamsted Research Station in England; some of them, such as the Park Grass Experiment, are still running. In America, the Hatch Act of 1887 provided |
funding for what it was the first to call "agricultural science", driven by farmers' interest in fertilizers. In agricultural entomology, the USDA began to research biological control in 1881; it instituted its first large program in 1905, searching Europe and Japan for natural enemies of the gypsy moth and browntail moth, establishing parasitoids such as solitary wasps and predators of both pests in the USA.
Policy
Agricultural policy is the set of government decisions and actions relating to domestic agriculture and imports of foreign agricultural products. Governments usually implement agricultural policies with the goal of achieving a specific outcome in the domestic agricultural product markets. Some overarching themes include risk management and adjustment including policies related to climate change, food safety and natural disasters, economic stability including policies related to taxes, natural resources and environmental sustainability especially water policy, research and development, and mark |
et access for domestic commodities including relations with global organizations and agreements with other countries. Agricultural policy can also touch on food quality, ensuring that the food supply is of a consistent and known quality, food security, ensuring that the food supply meets the population's needs, and conservation. Policy programs can range from financial programs, such as subsidies, to encouraging producers to enroll in voluntary quality assurance programs.
There are many influences on the creation of agricultural policy, including consumers, agribusiness, trade lobbies and other groups. Agribusiness interests hold a large amount of influence over policy making, in the form of lobbying and campaign contributions. Political action groups, including those interested in environmental issues and labor unions, also provide influence, as do lobbying organizations representing individual agricultural commodities. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO leads international effo |
rts to defeat hunger and provides a forum for the negotiation of global agricultural regulations and agreements. Samuel Jutzi, director of FAO's animal production and health division, states that lobbying by large corporations has stopped reforms that would improve human health and the environment. For example, proposals in 2010 for a voluntary code of conduct for the livestock industry that would have provided incentives for improving standards for health, and environmental regulations, such as the number of animals an area of land can support without longterm damage, were successfully defeated due to large food company pressure.
See also
Aeroponics
Agricultural aircraft
Agricultural engineering
Agricultural robot
Agroecology
Agrominerals
Buildingintegrated agriculture
Contract farming
Corporate farming
Crofting
Ecoagriculture
Hill farming
List of documentary films about agriculture
Pharming genetics
Remote sensing
Subsistence economy
Vertical farming
Vegetable farming
References
Cited |
sources
External links
Food and Agriculture Organization
United States Department of Agriculture
Agriculture material from the World Bank Group
Agriculture
Agronomy
Food industry |
Aldous Leonard Huxley 26 July 1894 22 November 1963 was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 booksboth novels and nonfiction worksas well as wideranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism and universalism, addressing these subjects with works such as The Perennial Philos |
ophy 1945which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticismand The Doors of Perception 1954which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World 1932 and his final novel Island 1962, he presented his vision of dystopia and utopia, respectively.
Early life
Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894. He was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one of her sister's novels. Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist "Darwin's Bulldog". His brother Julian Huxley and halfbrother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevenen Huxley 18891914, who took his own life after a period of c |
linical depression.
As a child, Huxley's nickname was "Ogie", short for "Ogre". He was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently "contemplated the strangeness of things". According to his cousin and contemporary, Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing.
Huxley's education began in his father's wellequipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. He was taught there by his own mother for several years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside he went on to Eton College. His mother died in 1908, when he was 14 his father later remarried. He contracted the eye disease Keratitis punctata in 1911; this "left him practically blind for two to three years". This "ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor". In October 1913, Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He volunteered for the British Army in January 1916, for the Great War; however, he was rejected on health grounds, being halfblind in one eye |
. His eyesight later partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote
Following his years at Balliol, Huxley, being financially indebted to his father, decided to find employment. He taught French for a year at Eton College, where Eric Blair who was to take the pen name George Orwell and Steven Runciman were among his pupils. He was mainly remembered as being an incompetent schoolmaster unable to keep order in class. Nevertheless, Blair and others spoke highly of his excellent command of language.
Huxley also worked for a time during the 1920s at Brunner and Mond, an advanced chemical plant in Billingham in County Durham, northeast England. According to the introduction to the latest edition of his science fiction novel Brave New World 1932, the experience he had there of "an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence" was an important source for the novel.
Career
Huxley completed his first unpublished nov |
el at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early twenties, establishing himself as a successful writer and social satirist. His first published novels were social satires, Crome Yellow 1921, Antic Hay 1923, Those Barren Leaves 1925, and Point Counter Point 1928. Brave New World 1932 was his fifth novel and first dystopian work. In the 1920s, he was also a contributor to Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines.
Contact with the Bloomsbury Set
During the First World War, Huxley spent much of his time at Garsington Manor near Oxford, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, working as a farm labourer. While at the Manor, he met several Bloomsbury Group figures, including Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Clive Bell. Later, in Crome Yellow 1921, he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were very scarce, but in 1919, John Middleton Murry was reorganising the Athenaeum and invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted immediately, and quickly married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys 18991955, als |
o at Garsington. They lived with their young son in Italy part of the time during the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend D. H. Lawrence. Following Lawrence's death in 1930, Huxley edited Lawrence's letters 1932. Very early in 1929, in London, Huxley met Gerald Heard, a brilliant writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science.
Works of this period included important novels on the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most famously Brave New World, and on pacifist themes for example, Eyeless in Gaza. In Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, Huxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production and Pavlovian conditioning. Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, and included him as a character in Eyeless in Gaza 1936.
Beginning in this period, Huxley began to write and edit nonfiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means 1937, An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy, and was an active member of t |
he Peace Pledge Union.
Life in the United States
In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood with his wife Maria, son Matthew Huxley, and friend Gerald Heard. He lived in the U.S., mainly in southern California, until his death, and also for a time in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote Ends and Means published in 1937. The book contains tracts on war, religion, nationalism, and ethics.
Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta Upanishadcentered philosophy, meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa. In 1938, Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange sometimes edging on debate over many years, with Krishnamurti representing the more rarefied, detached, ivorytower perspective and Huxley, with his pragmatic concerns, the more socially and historically informed position. Huxley provided an introduction to Krishnamurti's quintessential statement, The First and Last Freedom 1954.
Huxley also became a Vedantist in the circ |
le of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda, and introduced Christopher Isherwood to this circle. Not long afterwards, Huxley wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas, The Perennial Philosophy, which discussed the teachings of renowned mystics of the world. Huxley's book affirmed a sensibility that insists there are realities beyond the generally accepted "five senses" and that there is genuine meaning for humans beyond both sensual satisfactions and sentimentalities.
Huxley became a close friend of Remsen Bird, president of Occidental College. He spent much time at the college, which is in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The college appears as "Tarzana College" in his satirical novel After Many a Summer 1939. The novel won Huxley a British literary award, the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Huxley also incorporated Bird into the novel.
During this period, Huxley earned a substantial income as a Hollywood screenwriter; Christopher Isherwood, in his autobiography My Guru an |
d His Disciple, states that Huxley earned more than 3,000 per week approximately 50,000 in 2020 dollars as a screenwriter, and that he used much of it to transport Jewish and leftwing writer and artist refugees from Hitler's Germany to the US. In March 1938, Huxley's friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with MetroGoldwynMayer MGM, which hired him for Madame Curie which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor. Eventually, the film was completed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and cast. Huxley received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice 1940 and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre 1944. He was commissioned by Walt Disney in 1945 to write a script based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the biography of the story's author, Lewis Carroll. The script was not used, however.
Huxley wrote an introduction to the posthumous publication of J. D. Unwin's 1940 book Hopousia or The Sexual and Economic Foundations of |
a New Society.
On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen EightyFour, congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter to Orwell, he predicted
In 1953, Huxley and Maria applied for United States citizenship and presented themselves for examination. When Huxley refused to bear arms for the U.S. and would not state that his objections were based on religious ideals, the only excuse allowed under the McCarran Act, the judge had to adjourn the proceedings. He withdrew his application. Nevertheless, he remained in the U.S. In 1959, Huxley turned down an offer to be made a Knight Bachelor by the Macmillan government without putting forward a reason; his brother Julian had been knighted in 1958, while another brother Andrew would be knighted in 1974.
In the fall semester of 1960 Huxley was invited by Professor Huston Smith to be the Carnegie Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. As part of the MIT cente |
nnial program of events organised by the Department of Humanities, Huxley presented a series of lectures titled, "What a Piece of Work is a Man" which concerned history, language, and art.
Lateinlife perspectives
Biographer Harold H. Watts wrote that Huxley's writings in the "final and extended period of his life" are "the work of a man who is meditating on the central problems of many modern men". Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for itself. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised interview conducted by journalist Mike Wallace, Huxley outlined several major concerns the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency towards distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to persuasion; the tendency to promote modern politicians to a naive public as wellmarketed commodities. In a December 1962 letter to brother Juli |
an, summarizing a paper he had presented in Santa Barbara, he wrote, "What I said was that if we didn't pretty quickly start thinking of human problems in ecological terms rather than in terms of power politics we should very soon be in a bad way."
Huxley's engagement with Eastern wisdom traditions was entirely compatible with a strong appreciation of modern science. Biographer Milton Birnbaum wrote that Huxley "ended by embracing both science and Eastern religion". In his last book, Literature and Science, Huxley wrote that "The ethical and philosophical implications of modern science are more Buddhist than Christian...." In "A Philosopher's Visionary Prediction," published one month before he died, Huxley endorsed training in general semantics and "the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness," writing that "We must learn how to be mentally silent, we must cultivate the art of pure receptivity.... The individual must learn to decondition himself, must be able to cut holes in the fence of |
verbalized symbols that hems him in."
Association with Vedanta
Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other followers, he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.
In 1944, Huxley wrote the introduction to the "Bhagavad Gita The Song of God", translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
From 1941 until 1960, Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John Van Druten from 1951 through 1962.
Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples. Two of those lectures have been released on CD Knowledge and Understanding and Who Are We? from 1955. Non |
etheless, Huxley's agnosticism, together with his speculative propensity, made it difficult for him to fully embrace any form of institutionalised religion.
Psychedelic drug use and mystical experiences
In the spring of 1953, Huxley had his first experience with the psychedelic drug mescaline. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Doctor Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist then employed in a Canadian institution, and eventually asked him to supply a dose of mescaline; Osmond obliged and supervised Huxley's session in southern California. After the publication of The Doors of Perception, in which he recounted this experience, Huxley and Swami Prabhavananda disagreed about the meaning and importance of the psychedelic drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions. Huxley later had an experience on mescaline that he considered more profound than those detailed in The D |
oors of Perception.
Huxley wrote that "The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less selfcentered and more creative life."
Eyesight
Differing accounts exist about the details of the quality of Huxley's eyesight at specific points in his life. Circa 1939, Huxley encountered the Bates method, in which he was instructed by Margaret Darst Corbett. In 1940, Huxley relocated from Hollywood to a ranchito in the high desert hamlet of Llano, California, in northern Los Angeles County. Huxley then said that his sight improved dramatically with the Bates Method and the extreme and pure natural lighting of the southwestern American desert. He reported that, for the first time in more than 25 years, he was able to read without glasses and without strain. He even tried driving a car along the dirt road beside the ranch. He wrote a book about his experiences with the Bates Method, The |
Art of Seeing, which was published in 1942 U.S., 1943 UK. The book contained some generally disputed theories, and its publication created a growing degree of popular controversy about Huxley's eyesight.
It was, and is, widely believed that Huxley was nearly blind since the illness in his teens, despite the partial recovery that had enabled him to study at Oxford. For example, some ten years after publication of The Art of Seeing, in 1952, Bennett Cerf was present when Huxley spoke at a Hollywood banquet, wearing no glasses and apparently reading his paper from the lectern without difficulty "Then suddenly he falteredand the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn't reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonising moment."
Brazilian author Joo Ubaldo Ribeiro |
, who as a young journalist spent several evenings in the Huxleys' company in the late 1950s, wrote that Huxley had said to him, with a wry smile "I can hardly see at all. And I don't give a damn, really."
On the other hand, Huxley's second wife, Laura Archera, later emphasised in her biographical account, This Timeless Moment "One of the great achievements of his life that of having regained his sight." After revealing a letter she wrote to the Los Angeles Times disclaiming the label of Huxley as a "poor fellow who can hardly see" by Walter C. Alvarez, she tempered her statement "Although I feel it was an injustice to treat Aldous as though he were blind, it is true there were many indications of his impaired vision. For instance, although Aldous did not wear glasses, he would quite often use a magnifying lens." Laura Huxley proceeded to elaborate a few nuances of inconsistency peculiar to Huxley's vision. Her account, in this respect, agrees with the following sample of Huxley's own words from The Art of S |
eeing "The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable." Nevertheless, the topic of Huxley's eyesight has continued to endure similar, significant controversy.
American popular science author Steven Johnson, in his book Mind Wide Open, quotes Huxley about his difficulties with visual encoding "I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon ..."
Personal life
Huxley married on 10 July 1919 Maria Nys 10 September 1899 12 February 1955, a Belgian epidemiologist from Bellem, a village near Aalter, he met at Garsington, Oxfordshire, in 1919. They had one c |
hild, Matthew Huxley 19 April 1920 10 February 2005, who had a career as an author, anthropologist, and prominent epidemiologist. In 1955, Maria Huxley died of cancer.
In 1956, Huxley married Laura Archera 19112007, also an author, as well as a violinist and psychotherapist. She wrote This Timeless Moment, a biography of Huxley. She told the story of their marriage through Mary Ann Braubach's 2010 documentary, Huxley on Huxley.
Huxley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 1960; in the years that followed, with his health deteriorating, he wrote the Utopian novel Island, and gave lectures on "Human Potentialities" both at the UCSF Medical Center and at the Esalen Institute. These lectures were fundamental to the beginning of the Human Potential Movement.
Huxley was a close friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Rosalind Rajagopal and was involved in the creation of the Happy Valley School, now Besant Hill School of Happy Valley, in Ojai, California.
The most substantial collection of Huxley's few remaining pap |
ers, following the destruction of most in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, is at the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. Some are also at the Stanford University Libraries.
On 9 April 1962 Huxley was informed he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, the senior literary organisation in Britain, and he accepted the title via letter on 28 April 1962. The correspondence between Huxley and the society is kept at the Cambridge University Library. The society invited Huxley to appear at a banquet and give a lecture at Somerset House, London, in June 1963. Huxley wrote a draft of the speech he intended to give at the society; however, his deteriorating health meant he was not able to attend.
Death
On his deathbed, unable to speak owing to advanced laryngeal cancer, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 g, intramuscular." According to her account of his death in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 1120 a.m. and a second dose an hou |
r later; Huxley died aged 69, at 520 p.m. Los Angeles time, on 22 November 1963.
Media coverage of Huxley's death, along with that of fellow British author C. S. Lewis, was overshadowed by the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy on the same day, less than seven hours before Huxley's death. In a 2009 article for New York magazine titled "The Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club", Christopher Bonanos wrote
This coincidence served as the basis for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, which imagines a conversation among the three men taking place in Purgatory following their deaths.
Huxley's memorial service took place in London in December 1963; it was led by his elder brother Julian. On 27 October 1971, his ashes were interred in the family grave at the Watts Cemetery, home of the Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton, Guildford, Surrey, England.
Huxley had been a longtime friend of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky |
, who dedicated his last orchestral composition to Huxley. What became Variations Aldous Huxley in memoriam was begun in July 1963, completed in October 1964, and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 17 April 1965.
Awards
1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
1959 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit .
1962 Companion of Literature
Film adaptations of Huxley's work
1950 Prelude to Fame based upon Young Archimedes
1968 Point Counter Point
1971 The Devils
1980 Brave New World
1998 Brave New World
2020 Brave New World
Bibliography
See also
List of peace activists
References
Sources
. Reprinted in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky, revised edition, edited by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone. New York W. W. Norton, 1972.
Further reading
Anderson, Jack. 4 July 1982. "Ballet Suzanne Farrell in Variations Premiere". The New York Times.
Atkins, John. Aldous Huxley A Literary Study, J. Calder, 1956
Barnes, Clive. 1 April 1966. "Ballet Still Another Bala |
nchineStravinsky Pearl; City Troupe Performs in Premiere Here Variations for Huxley at State Theater". The New York Times, p. 28.
Firchow, Peter. Aldous Huxley Satirist and Novelist, U of Minnesota P, 1972
Firchow, Peter. The End of Utopia A Study of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Bucknell UP, 1984
Huxley, Aldous. The Human Situation Aldous Huxley Lectures at Santa Barbara 1959, Flamingo Modern Classic, 1994,
Huxley, Laura Archera. This Timeless Moment, Celestial Arts, 2001,
Meckier, Jerome. Aldous Huxley Modern Satirical Novelist of Ideas, Firchow and Nugel editors, LIT Verlag BerlinHamburgMnster, 2006,
Morgan, W. John, 'Pacifism or Bourgeois Pacifism? Huxley, Orwell, and Caudwell', Chapter 5 in Morgan, W. John and Guilherme, Alexandre Eds.,Peace and WarHistorical, Philosophical, and Anthropological Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp, 7196. .
Murray, Nicholas. Aldous Huxley, Macmillan, 2003,
Poller, Jake. Aldous Huxley, Reaktion Critical Lives, 2021. .
Poller, Jake. Aldous Huxley |
and Alternative Spirituality, Brill, 2019. .
Rolo, Charles J. ed.. The World of Aldous Huxley, Grosset Universal Library, 1947.
Shaw, Jeffrey M. Illusions of Freedom Thomas Merton and Jacques Ellul on Technology and the Human Condition. Eugene, Oregon Wipf and Stock. 2014. .
Shadurski, Maxim. The Nationality of Utopia H. G. Wells, England, and the World State. New York and London Routledge, 2020. Chapter 5
Watt, Conrad ed.. Aldous Huxley, Routledge, 1997,
External links
Aldous Huxley full interview 1958 The Problems of Survival and Freedom in America
Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
Raymond Fraser, George Wickes Spring 1960. "Interview Aldous Huxley The Art of Fiction No. 24". The Paris Review.
BBC discussion programme In our time "Brave New World". Huxley and the novel. 9 April 2009. Audio, 45 minutes
BBC In their own words series. 12 October 1958 video, 12 mins
"The Ultimate Revolution" talk at UC Berkeley, 20 March 1962
Huxley interviewed on The Mike Wallace Interview 18 May 19 |
58 video
Centre for Huxley Research
Aldous Huxley Papers at University of California, Los Angeles Library Special Collections
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