Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry and was the key development that led to the rise of human civilisation, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. Agriculture encompasses a wide variety of specialities and techniques, including ways to expand the lands suitable for plant raising by digging water-channels and other forms of irrigation. This book illustrates how the need for sustained agricultural production increases as the human population increases, while many natural resources grow scarce and the amount of land devoted to agriculture declines.