harvest
The harvest summarizes all the work that is necessary to bring in agricultural plants and fruits. The aim of all methods used for harvesting is to remove the agricultural products from the place of cultivation as far as possible without loss during the period in which they fulfill the cultivation purpose (human or animal consumption or other use, e.g. fiber production).
meaning
Are of great importance for the harvest:
- the right time,
- the weather ,
- the quick completion of the necessary work,
- Agricultural engineering .
A distinction is made between the following main crops in domestic agriculture:
- The green forage harvest extends to all green forage crops that should be kept in a preserved state (for winter feeding).
- The grain harvest includes grain as well as oil and legumes.
- The root crop harvest brings in roots and tubers (e.g. potatoes and sugar beets ).
- With fruit harvests , fruit ripeness and climacteric (botany) must be observed.
- In viticulture, the grape harvest is largely done by hand.
The harvest has always been the most important period of an agricultural year. Successful harvesting and storage of the harvest ensured survival in the next winter. Particularly in the northern latitudes of Europe, where there is only one harvest per year, crop failures often mean famine , poverty and death.
Forestry and pond management
The timber harvest is the forestry felling of wood. The autumn fishing in pond farming is also a harvest.
Yield
The harvest import per unit area (mostly per hectare ) is understood as the yield . Methods to increase the yield were and are, for example, three-field farming , fertilizer , breeding or artificial irrigation .
Crop damage and crop failures
Harvest damage is understood to be all damage to crops and cereals, mostly caused by natural influences, which negatively affect the quality or quantity of the crop yield before harvest. Crop damage leads to crop failures on a larger scale. They often occur as a result of extreme climatic events such as prolonged drought , storms , excessive pest or disease infestation (such as insect pests, plant diseases) or natural disasters. They can be caused by Colorado beetles , potato rot , black grain rust , hailstorms , storm damage , soil erosion , soil protection and other causes.
As crop failure is defined as a harvest with a very poor yield. As a result, there are often supply problems in the country concerned. In earlier centuries, crop failures often led to famine among the population. People's diet consisted of agricultural products that could not be preserved . Even farm animals , such as cows and pigs were fed with these products and were therefore affected by crop failure. Bad harvests and subsequent famines often led to waves of emigration to other countries or continents, for example in the mid-1840s after the Great Famine in Ireland due to potato rot. Weather factors are temperature extremes , cold waves and heat waves . A year without a summer was the year 1816 as a result of the eruption of the Tambora volcano on the island of Sumbawa in what is now Indonesia . A volcanic winter followed , as the American climatologist William Jackson Humphreys found out in 1920. In addition to approximately 150 km 3 of dust and ash, the eruption also hurled sulfur compounds, which are estimated to have a sulfur dioxide equivalent of 130 megatons , into the atmosphere . These lay like a veil around the entire globe in high layers of air. The global climate continued to cool until 1819.
The invention of artificial fertilizer (the Haber-Bosch process for the industrial production of ammonia from the elemental gases nitrogen and hydrogen was patented in 1910), advances in soil science and the mechanization of plowing ( tractors from the 1920s / 30s) made significant contributions to this Avoid crop failures due to depleted or overused soils.
thanks
The harvest was therefore already completed by the Greeks and Romans with special celebrations. The church harvest festival, usually celebrated in Germany on the first Sunday after Michaelmas (29 September), has replaced the pagan harvest sacrifices .
Even today, landlords hold festivities at which the farm workers and their families are entertained. Local customs are e.g. B. the so-called harvest beer and the harvest wreath (or the harvest crown ). The harvest wreath consists of the last harvested ears of wheat and is handed over to the manager (e.g. landlord) by the workforce on a pitchfork, with which the wages and a banquet are demanded from him.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Prussia: Agriculture according to ecological laws. 2nd Edition. CF Müller, Heidelberg 1991/1994, ISBN 3-7880-9873-2 , p. 250.
- ^ Hans Graf: Climate changes caused by volcanoes ; Research report 2002 of the MPI for Meteorology.