In so many ways that it’s difficult to know where to begin!
I think I could group those different ways into three groups:
1. By helping farmers decide when and where to plant crops (e.g. ‘will it rain tomorrow?’ or ‘what crops would grow well in this soil?’). People have been answering such questions — with different balances between science and hocus-pocus — for thousands of years since farming began.
2. By allowing farmers to modify the environment in which the crops are grown (e.g. by irrigating [watering] land, or by growing vegetables in greenhouses). This has also been done for thousands of years (though of course we have better technology now!).
3. By allowing farmers to modify the crops themselves so that they grow “better”. This, again, has been done for thousands of years: first by “selective breeding” (see Wikipedia for a detailed explanation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection), and now also through genetic modification, which is a faster and more direct way of getting to the variety of crop (or animal) you want.
Hi Jazzi,
In so many ways that it’s difficult to know where to begin!
I think I could group those different ways into three groups:
1. By helping farmers decide when and where to plant crops (e.g. ‘will it rain tomorrow?’ or ‘what crops would grow well in this soil?’). People have been answering such questions — with different balances between science and hocus-pocus — for thousands of years since farming began.
2. By allowing farmers to modify the environment in which the crops are grown (e.g. by irrigating [watering] land, or by growing vegetables in greenhouses). This has also been done for thousands of years (though of course we have better technology now!).
3. By allowing farmers to modify the crops themselves so that they grow “better”. This, again, has been done for thousands of years: first by “selective breeding” (see Wikipedia for a detailed explanation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection), and now also through genetic modification, which is a faster and more direct way of getting to the variety of crop (or animal) you want.
Hope that helps!
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