Crops - Hunting And Gathering; Crops Obtained From Unmanaged Ecosystems, Plants, Terrestrial Animals, Aquatic Animals
species management wild managed
Crops are any organisms that humans utilize as a source of food, materials, or energy. Crops may be utilized for subsistence purposes, to barter for other goods, or to sell for a cash profit. They may be harvested from wild ecosystems, or they may be husbanded and managed, as occurs with domesticated species in agriculture.
In general, the purpose of management is to increase the amount of crop productivity that is available for use by humans. There is, however, a continuum in the intensity of crop-management systems. Species cultivated in agriculture are subjected to relatively intensive management systems. However, essentially wild, free-ranging species may also be managed to some degree. This occurs, for example, in forestry and in the management of ocean fisheries and certain species of hunted animals. Most crops are plant species, but animals and microorganisms (e.g., yeast) can also be crops.
In general, unmanaged, free-ranging crops are little modified genetically or morphologically (in form) from their non-crop ancestors. However, modern, domesticated crops that are intensively managed are remarkably different from their wild ancestors. In some cases a nondomesticated variety of the species no longer exists.
Additional Topics
Human beings can only be sustained by utilizing other species as sources of food, material, and energy. Humans have thus always had an absolute requirement for the goods and services provided by other species, and this will always be the case. Although direct genetic modification has in the last few years been added (controversially) to artificial selection as a technique for adjusting plant and a…
Among plant crops that humans continue to obtain from natural ecosystems, trees are among the most no-table. In the parlance of forestry, the terms "virgin" and "primary" are used to refer to older, natural forests from which wild, unmanaged trees have not yet been harvested by humans. "Secondary" forests have sustained at least one intensive harvest of th…
As considered here, agricultural crops are managed relatively intensively for the sustained productivity of food and materials useful to humans. In this sense, agricultural systems can involve the cultivation of plants and livestock on farms, as well as the cultivation of fish and invertebrates in aquaculture and the growing of trees in agroforestry plantations. Agricultural systems can vary treme…
Hundreds of species of plants are cultivated by humans under managed agricultural conditions. However, most of these species are tropical crops of relatively minor importance—minor in terms of their contribution to the global production of all agricultural plants. In fact, a small number of plant species contribute disproportionately to the global harvest of plant crops in agricultural syst…
Enormous numbers of domesticated animals are cultivated by people as food crops. In many cases the animals are used to continuously produce some edible product that can be harvested without killing them. For example, milk can be collected daily from various species of mammals, including cows, goats, sheep, horses, and camels. Similarly, chickens can produce eggs regularly. All of the above animals…
Aquaculture is an aquatic analogue of terrestrial agriculture. In aquaculture, animals or seaweeds are cultivated under controlled, sometimes intensively managed conditions, to be eventually harvested as food for humans. Increasingly, aquaculture is being viewed as an alternative to the exploitation of wild stocks of aquatic animals and seaweeds. The best opportunities to develop aquaculture occur…
Agroforestry is a forest-related analogue of agriculture. In agroforestry, trees are usually cultivated under intensively managed conditions, to eventually be harvested as a source of lumber, pulpwood, or fuelwood. In many regions, this sort of intensive forestry is being developed as a high-yield alternative to the harvesting of natural forests. The most important trees grown in plantations in th…
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