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What’s agriculture?
Living in society
Agriculture
is the cultivation of
crops
and the raising
of
livestock
. Crops and livestock both come from nature,
so agriculture belongs to the
primary sector
.
Arable farming
produces crops for food and other products. There are
two types of arable farming:
dry farming
and
irrigated farming
.
1
Do these products come from crops or livestock?
Test your partner.
raspberries lettuce beef cocoa beans
olives chicken lamb eggs almonds
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E T T I N G S T A R T E D
Dry farming
Dry farmers don’t usually water their crops.
In other words, the crops only get water
when it rains.
Dry farmers need large fields so they can
grow lots of crops.
The most important dry crops in Spain are
wheat, grapes and olives. Olives are an
important dry crop in Andalucía. People eat
the olives or make them into olive oil.
Irrigated farming
Farmers use
irrigation
systems to water
their crops. They don’t wait for it to rain.
Thanks to irrigation, farmers can grow lots of
crops in relatively small fields.
Tomatoes, beans and melons are typical
crops in irrigated farming because they need
water to grow. Many fruits and garden
vegetables are grown on irrigated farms
in Murcia, such as cherries and tomatoes.
Sometimes livestock
are bought and sold at
auction. At an auction,
the person who o ers the
most money gets
the animal. The most
ever paid for a cow at an
auction was $1.2 million!
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