subject: Lets Hear It For The Agri-science Department [print this page] Agriculture is one of the human inventions that tend not to be thought of as an invention. But the process of actively taking control over ones surroundings and shaping them to suit human needs was truly revolutionary. The ability to take wild animals and turn them into livestock vastly increased human stores of food, and by providing a more stable setting, allowed civilization to develop. There are scholars who think that one of the keys to advanced development for much of human history was the ability to breed cattle. We take it for granted, but the practice of cattle breeding provides a lot of cultural and social benefits. There are the obvious advantages to cattle, such as milk and other dairy products, beef, obviously, and leather. Cattle can also work the land, and by providing so much food and goods over the course of their lifespan, also provide incentive to settle in a relatively fixed location.
Few other animals can match the benefit to humanity that cattle provide. With careful husbandry, cattle breeding also helped provide various different breeds of cattle optimized to survive and thrive in different locations, or bred to be highly adaptable. The few other animals in contention with cattle are sheep and goat, as both provide milk, as well as meat. In the case of sheep, they provide wool, as well. They also have the advantage of being able to survive on less acreage than cattle. This is why you see goat and sheep products more common on small islands or mountainous areas. Agriculture has radically changed human diets; we get more grain than we did as hunter gatherers and we drink milk through our adulthood, something no other creature in the wild does.
Agriculture, as a whole, and cattle breeding, specifically, tend not to be discussed in the same manner as the invention of fire in terms of importance to the human species, but perhaps they should be. Increasing and stabilizing the food stores allowed more people the free time to think of things, which allowed for more creative problem solving. While its common for students in liberal arts to sneer at the agricultural science department, its worth remembering that philosophy, literature, etc. were made possible because of the freedoms afforded by agriculture. If we were still a hunter gatherer culture, our numbers would be lower, and our lives more devoted to just the attainment of food, now more of the population is free to pursue other paths as a small specialized core of agriculture keeps society fed and moving.
