National Open Farm Day – May 1, 2023

History of National Open Farm Day

Throughout human history, farming has been reinvented many times and in various places. The Neolithic Revolution marked the transition from hunter-gatherer to the established agricultural society, and it began roughly 12,000 years ago, around the start of the Holocene geological epoch. It was the world’s first historically proven agricultural revolution. Farming moved from the Middle East to Europe, and by 4,000 B.C., people in central Europe were pulling plows and wagons with oxen.

The Columbian exchange which began in 1492 with Christopher Columbus’ travels introduced crops like maize, potatoes, and tomatoes to Europe as an addition to what was available — wheat, rice, and turnips, as well as cattle, to the Americas. Agriculture productivity has increased dramatically in industrialized countries and to a lesser extent in developing countries since 1900, as human labor has been replaced by mechanization, chemicals, and selective breeding.

Agricultural productivity and net output in Britain surged between the 17th and the mid-19th century. Enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation to retain soil nutrients, and selective breeding enabled a population increase of 5.7 million in 1750, which was unparalleled. In the mid-17th century, writers such as Samuel Hartlib, Walter Blith, and others began to offer advice on more profitable farming techniques in England.

The British agricultural revolution in the 18th century as well as the green revolution in the second half of the 20th century prompted shifts in farming techniques. The green revolution was a series of research, development, and technology transfer activities that took place between the 1940s and the late 1970s. After the late 1960s, the green revolution boosted agricultural production all over the world.