Harvest

The harvest summarizes all the work necessary for harvesting of agricultural crops and fruits. The aim of all the techniques for harvesting method is, as far as possible without loss take away the agricultural products in the time in which they meet the growing end ( human or animal consumption or any other use, such as fiber production ) as possible from the cultivation site. The forestry harvesting of timber in the forest is also referred to as crop ( harvesting ), as the autumnal carp harvesting of fish ponds.

Overview

Have great importance for the harvest

• The right time
• The weather
• Rapid processing of the necessary works.

The following are the main crops in domestic agriculture:

• Forage harvest: it extends to all green fodder crops that are to be kept (for the winter feeding ) in preserved condition;
• Grain harvest: includes the harvesting of grain, oil, and legumes;
• Root crop harvesting: harvesting of root and tuber crops ( eg potatoes and sugar beet).
• In fruit cultivation, one speaks of fruit harvest - in compliance with fruit or ripening,
• And in the wine of the grape harvest.

The harvest was at all times the most important period of the agricultural year. The successful introduction and storage of the harvest ensured the survival of the next winter. Especially in northern latitudes of Europe where only one crop per year is introduced, meant poor harvests often famine, poverty and death.

The harvest was therefore completed by special celebrations already among the Greeks and Romans. The church harvest festival, celebrated in Germany usually on the first Sunday after Michaelmas (29 September ) is taken the place of the pagan harvest victims.

In previous centuries, organized by the landowner festivities were held, where the peasants were entertained by the farmer. Local customs are, for example, the so-called beer harvest and harvest wreath (or the harvest crown). The harvest wreath consists of the last ears of corn harvested and the plant manager (eg landlord ) passed by the workforce on a pitchfork, which is claimed by him wages and a feast.

Earnings

Income harvesting import per unit area is seen (usually per hectare). Methods to increase the yield were, and are, for example, crop rotation, fertilizers, breeding or artificial irrigation.

Crop damage

Under crop damage is anyone, mostly caused by natural influences, damage to crops and cereals, which adversely affect the quality or quantity of the crop yield before harvest. Cause crop damage on a large scale crop failure. They often occur as a result of extreme climatic events such as prolonged drought, storms, excessive pest or disease (such as insect pests, plant diseases ) or natural disasters.

See also: Colorado potato beetle, potato blight, cereal stem rust, hail damage, storm damage, soil erosion, soil protection

Crop failure

As a crop failure one called a crop with a very poor yield. Thus, there is often supply problems in the country.

In previous centuries, crop failures often led to famine in the population. The nutrition of the people consisted of agricultural products, which could not be preserved. Also livestock such as cows and pigs were fed with these products and were therefore affected by crop failure.

Crop failures and subsequent famines led earlier often emigrations to other countries or continents, for example, the potato blight in the mid- 1840s led to the Great Famine in Ireland.

The invention of artificial fertilizers ( the Haber -Bosch process for the industrial production of ammonia from the elements nitrogen and hydrogen in 1910 patented), Advances in Soil Science and the mechanization of plowing (tractors from the 1920er/30er years ) contributed significantly to the to avoid crop failures by depleted or over-exploited soils.

• Crop failure due to weather see temperature extremes, cold wave, heat wave

• Year without a summer was the year 1816. Was the cause, as the American climatologist William Jackson Humphreys discovered in 1920, a Volcanic winter due to the eruption of Tambora volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia today. He had thrown alongside about 150 cubic kilometers of dust and ash and sulfur compounds, which are estimated at an equivalent of 130 megatons of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, in the high layers of the atmosphere like a veil around the globe lay down. The downturn in the global climate by the outbreak still held until 1819.