Petani adalah seseorang yang bergerak di bidang pertanian, utamanya dengan cara melakukan pengelolaan tanah dengan tujuan untuk menumbuhkan dan memelihara tanaman (seperti padi, bunga, buah dan lain lain), dengan harapan untuk memperoleh hasil dari tanaman tersebut untuk digunakan sendiri ataupun menjualnya kepada orang lain. Mereka juga dapat menyediakan bahan mentah bagi industri, seperti serealia untuk minuman beralkohol, buah untuk jus, dan wol atau kapas untuk penenunan dan pembuatan pakaian.
Setiap orang bisa menjadi petani (asalkan punya sebidang tanah atau lebih), walau ia sudah punya pekerjaan bukan sebagai petani. Maksud dari kalimat tersebut bukan berarti pemilik tanah harus mencangkul atau mengolah sendiri tanah miliknya, tetapi bisa bekerjasama dengan petani tulen untuk bercocok tanam di tanah pertanian miliknya. Apabila ini diterapkan, berarti pemilik tanah itu telah memberi pekerjaan kepada orang lain walau hasilnya tidak banyak. Apabila bermaksud mengolah sendiri, tentu harus benar-benar bisa membagi waktu, tetapi kemungkinan akan kesulitan kalau tanahnya lebih dari satu petak. A farmer[1] (also called an agriculturer) is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmed land or might work as a labourer on land owned by others, but in advanced economies, a farmer is usually a farm owner, while employees of the farm are known as farm workers, or farmhands. However, in the not so distant past a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of (a plant, crop, etc.) by labor and attention, land or crops or raises animals (as livestock or fish).
History
Farming has been dated back as far as the Neolithic era. By the Bronze Age, the Sumerians had an agriculture specialized labour force by 5000–4000 BCE, and heavily depended on irrigation to grow crops. They relied on three-person teams when harvesting in the spring.[2] The Ancient Egypt farmers farmed and relied and irrigated their water from the Nile.[3]
Animal husbandry, the practice of rearing animals specifically for farming purposes, has existed for thousands of years. Dogs were domesticated in East Asia about 15,000 years ago. Goats and sheep were domesticated around 8000 BCE in Asia. Swine or pigs were domesticated by 7000 BCE in the Middle East and China. The earliest evidence of horse domestication dates to around 4000 BCE.[4]
Advancements in technology
A combine harvester on an English farm
In the U.S. of the 1930s, one farmer fed only himself and three other consumers. The same farmer now feeds well over a hundred people. However, some authors consider this estimate as flawed as it does not take into account that farming requires energy and many other resources which have to be provided by additional workers, so that the ratio of people fed to farmers is actually smaller than 100 to 1.[5]
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