Agriculture In Developed Countries

Modes of agricultural production

Production differences between developed and underdeveloped countries  are mainly in the level of implementation of new technologies and the use of alternative approaches work.

Agriculture and livestock in developed countries

The Agriculture

Agriculture in rich countries has a maximum productivity, but nonetheless occupies a fraction of the active population (around 5%). This allows both have cheap food for the population and industrial and agricultural products for export use. To this end a number of technical, organizational and legal criteria apply.

Technical:
Machinery: tractors, seeders, threshers, combines, etc.
Seed selection and genetic manipulation.
Chemical means: herbicides, insecticides, chemical fertilizers.
Other systems: agriculture under plastic greenhouses.
Organizational:
Crop specialization: tendency to monoculture commercial. Tillage facilitates and enhances economic performance.
Planning farming and crop types, depending on the features of the land, water availability, and weather forecasts.
Legal:
Ownership of the land, land consolidation trend to reduce costs and increase production of land.
Livestock

Modern farming has followed a parallel path to the agriculture. Thanks to the technical means and changes in organizational systems have resulted in a greater production of meat, milk, eggs and other products derived from livestock sector.

Selection and genetic manipulation. Improves the species through constant crossings. Genetic techniques serve to speed up the process.
Stabling: provides increased livestock to concentrate large numbers of animals in a small space. Reduces transportation costs.
Artificial feeding: its main drawback is the loss of quality in the final products.
Livestock industrialization processes: artificial milking, continuing to collect eggs, cold chains, etc.
Agriculture and livestock in developing countries

The Agriculture

In developing countries agriculture employs ancestral forms of work, as farmers generally lack the financial means to purchase machinery and modern technology. Moreover, the governments of these countries are numerous difficulties for land reform for changing the modes of distribution, organization and working of the land.

Broadly speaking, one can say that agriculture in poor countries simply limited to not apply any of the criteria for a maximum agricultural development in rich nations. Among the features of the ancestral agriculture include:

Technical means: animal traction, Roman plow, flood irrigation (canals), natural fertilizer.
Organization: subsistence farming on small plots that coexist with large estates dedicated to monoculture. Total lack of planning.
Livestock



Their situation is similar to that of agriculture, with the aggravating circumstance that there are no animals that can consume (the pork in Muslim countries or regions cow in Hindu religion) in many countries.

Extensive or nomadic nature: the traditional grazing keeps animals outdoors, whose food comes from natural pastures.
Low quality of livestock, due in part to the lack of selection or poor management of the crossings.
Low productivity: natural grazing does not allow the development of large cabins, except in areas of extremely fertile pastures and hinders fattening cattle.
Lack of technical means; as cold storage, transportation, processing industries, etc.

Pastoralism is a traditional activity still practiced residually in some developed countries.