Atoms in Agriculture
by Thomas S. Osborne,
Associate Professor of Agronomy, University of Tennessee.
To know what questions to put to Nature—that is 95 per cent of scientific research. —Whitehead
If man’s existence on the earth is compared to a calendar year, then he began farming in the very early morning of December 30 and began applying systematic knowledge to agriculture at 10:15 p.m. on December 31.
The first traces of man on the earth are dated at about one and three-quarter million years ago. Plant life then was very much like plant life today, but the animal population was quite different. Man became a producer of plants and animals instead of merely a gatherer and hunter about 8000 years ago. He has applied systematic study to cultivated plants and animals for only 300 years.