Teacher Guide to Farming
A farm is an expanse of land and buildings which is used mostly for producing different kinds of food, both plants and animals. They might also grow things like grains and fibers for fuel, as these days many companies use biological products to make new fuel which is friendly to the environment.
A farm is the basic way of producing food for a large amount of people, and can be operated in many ways. A lot of farms will be family-owned and run by a family of people. Equally, they are sometimes run by a whole community.
You will also find that some farms are owned by big businesses, or maybe even cared for by the Government. They can also appear in a large variety of sizes, spanning from just the size of a couple of small fields - to thousands of hectares (which is a measurement of large amounts of land).
Farming has existed for a very long time. It first began around 8000 BC! This happened in the area of 'Mesopotamia', which is today near the country of Turkey.
Since then the development of farming methods, and farms has been an important part of making different cities and towns work properly. As soon as people had moved away from hunting and gathering food for their family, they turned to farming for their food. As people work on farms and produced food, other people began creating roads to distribute the food amongst the town. This is how we see our modern ways of doing things being developed through history!
The way we do things today is a method which has been in the making for thousands of years. The term 'farming' in fact actually covers a wide variety of production of agricultural goods (agricultural goods are things that can be produced on a farm, both from an animal and from the ground). For instance, there are people who are known as 'subsistence farmers'. These kinds of farmers use a small area of land to produce the goods that they need, with very little things to use. This means that they only produce enough food for themselves and their family. This means that they don't sell any goods, but don't have to buy their food from any body else.
Then you have the people who are known as 'commercial farmers', which involve using large fields and a lot of animals to produce a lot of goods. By putting more into the farm, the farmers get more out of it. So this obviously means they have more than enough food to provide for their family!
So commercial farmers become known as 'commercial' because they sell the goods they make on the farm to other people who need to buy some food. This is where you get your food from! The supermarkets you buy food from source their products from commercial farmers who have a lot of land. Farming, whilst you might not realize it, is an important part of everyday life!
Related Teacher Resources That Are Worth A Look:
- All Around the Barnyard
- Bringing the Market to the Farm
- Davis' Farmland
- Here Is The Barn
- Kids Farm
- Farm Chores
- Farm Machines
- Farm Safety 4 Just Kids
- Farming
- On a Farm
- The Farmer