Agriculture Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about Agriculture.

Agriculture Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is Agriculture?
A: Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock.

Agriculture was the key development in the rise of what?
A: Sedentary human civilization.

Farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to do what?
A: To live in cities.

After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to do what around 11,500 years ago?
A: To plant them.

How long ago were pigs, sheep and cattle domesticated?
A: Over 10,000 years ago.

Plants were independently cultivated in how many regions of the world?
A: At least 11.

While agriculture usually refers to human activities, certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle do what?
A: Cultivate crops.

The development of agriculture enabled the human population to grow many times larger than could be sustained by what?
A: Hunting and gathering.

What are the eight Neolithic founder crops?
A: Emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax, and were cultivated in the Levant.

When was rice domesticated in China?
A: Between 11,500 and 6,200 BC with the earliest known cultivation from 5,700 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans.

Where were sheep domesticated between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago?
A: In Mesopotamia.

Cattle were domesticated from what in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan some 10,500 years ago?
A: Wild aurochs.

Pig production emerged in Eurasia, including Europe, East Asia and Southwest Asia, where wild boar were what?
A: Where wild boar were first domesticated about 10,500 years ago.

What was domesticated in the Andes of South America between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs?
A: The potato.

Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated where around 9,000 years ago?
A: In New Guinea.

Sorghum was domesticated in what region?
A: The Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago.

Cotton was domesticated in what region?
A: Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia.

In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was bred into maize by when?
A: 6,000 years ago.

In Eurasia, the Sumerians started to build villages from about when?
A: 8,000 BC, relying on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a canal system for irrigation.

When do ploughs appear in pictographs?
A: Around 3,000 BC; seed-ploughs around 2,300 BC.

Ancient Egyptian agriculture relied on what river and its seasonal flooding?
A: The Nile River.

Staple food crops were grains such as what?
A: Wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus.

In India, wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated by when?
A: 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats.

Cattle, sheep and goats were domesticated in what culture by 8,000–6,000 BC?
A: Mehrgarh.

When was cotton cultivated by?
A: The 5th-4th millennium BC.

Archeological evidence indicates a what from 2,500 BC in the Indus Valley civilization?
A: An animal-drawn plough.

In China, from the 5th century BC a nationwide granary system accompanied widespread what?
A: Silk farming.

Water-powered grain mills were in use by when?
A: The 1st century BC, followed by irrigation.

By the late 2nd century, heavy ploughs had been developed with what?
A: Iron ploughshares and mouldboards.

In Greece and Rome, the major cereals were what?
A: Wheat, emmer, and barley, alongside vegetables including peas, beans, and olives.

Sheep and goats were kept mainly for what?
A: Dairy products.

In the Americas, crops domesticated in Mesoamerica (apart from teosinte) include what?
A: Squash, beans, and cocoa.

Cocoa was being domesticated by the Mayo Chinchipe of the upper Amazon around when?
A: 3,000 BC.

The turkey was probably domesticated where?
A: In Mexico or the American Southwest.

The Aztecs developed irrigation systems, formed terraced hillsides, fertilized their soil, and developed what?
A: Chinampas or artificial islands.

The Mayas used extensive canal and raised field systems to farm what?
A: Swampland from 400 BC.

Coca was domesticated in the Andes, as were what?
A: The peanut, tomato, tobacco, and pineapple.

Animals including llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs were domesticated where?
A: In Peru.

In North America, the indigenous people of the East domesticated crops such as what?
A: Sunflower, tobacco, squash and Chenopodium.

Wild foods were harvested including what?
A: Wild rice and maple sugar.

The domesticated strawberry is a hybrid of what?
A: A Chilean and a North American species, developed by breeding in Europe and North America.

The indigenous people of the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest practiced forest gardening and what type of farming?
A: Fire-stick farming.

A system of companion planting called the Three Sisters was developed on what?
A: The Great Plains.

What were the three crops?
A: They were winter squash, maize, and climbing beans.

Indigenous Australians, long supposed to have been nomadic hunter-gatherers, practiced systematic what?
A: Burning to enhance natural productivity in fire-stick farming.

The Gunditjmara and other groups developed what?
A: Eel farming and fish trapping systems from some 5,000 years ago.

In two regions of Australia, the central west coast and eastern central, early farmers may have cultivated what?
A: Wams, native millet, and bush onions in permanent settlements.

In the Middle Ages, both in the Islamic world and in Europe, agriculture improved techniques and spread crop specimens throughout the region, including fruit trees such as what?
A: The orange to Europe by way of Al-Andalus.

Irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers advanced beginning when?
A: In the 19th century, triggered by the British Agricultural Revolution, allowing global population to rise significantly.

Since 1900, agriculture in developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen explosive productivity rises as human labor was replaced by what?
A: Mechanization, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding.

The Haber-Bosch method allowed the synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing what?
A: Crop yields and sustaining a further increase in global population.

Modern agriculture raised issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies, leading to what?
A: Alternative approaches such as the organic movement.

Reindeer herds form the basis of pastoral agriculture for whom?
A: Several Arctic and Subarctic peoples.

Pastoralism involves managing what?
A: Domesticated animals.

In nomadic pastoralism, herds of livestock are moved from place to place in search of what?
A: Pasture, fodder, and water.

Where is this type of farming practiced?
A: In arid and semi-arid regions of Sahara, Central Asia and some parts of India.

Subsistence farming is practiced to satisfy what?
A: Family or local needs alone, with little left over for transport elsewhere.

Where is it intensively practiced?
A: In Monsoon Asia and South-East Asia.

How many subsistence farmers worked in 2018?
A: An estimated 2.5 billion, cultivating about 60% of the earth's arable land.

Who has the largest agricultural output of any country?
A: China.

In recent years there has been a backlash against the environmental effects of what?
A: Conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic, regenerative, and sustainable agriculture movements.

One of the major forces behind this movement has been the European Union, which first certified organic food when?
A: In 1991 and began reform of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2005 to phase out commodity-linked farm subsidies, also known as decoupling.

The growth of organic farming has renewed research in alternative technologies such as what?
A: Integrated pest management, selective breeding, and controlled-environment agriculture.

Recent mainstream technological developments include what?
A: Genetically modified food.

Demand for non-food biofuel crops, development of former farm lands, rising transportation costs, climate change, growing consumer demand in China and India, and population growth, are threatening what in many parts of the world?
A: Food security.