This report was made possible thanks to Professor Manish N. Raizada from the course AG1110 at the University of Guelph for presenting the project. As well as Mr. Rene Mabon of the Brett Young seed company for providing realistic costs and information about distributing timothy seed.
Continue to the main menu to learn more about the project.
http://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/origin-of-crops/
Agriculture is the act of farming, including cultivation of the land to grow crops and manage livestock with the goal of producing food, fabric and other products. Before agriculture, many civilisations depended on hunting and gathering wild plants and animals to feed on and survive, finding food was their main priority. History shows that around 9000 B.C. humans first started to domesticate plants and started the transition to a farming society (Lee & Robinson, 2013). Domestication is the act of selecting wild plants, based on their growing ability and edible or useful product, and animals, based on their temperament and breeding abilities, for human use. Many crops which we harvest today have evolved so much that we no longer resemble their wild ancestors that we domesticated because of genetic selection, choosing to reproduce with only the best crops resulting is a better yield. The process of plant and animal domestication happened all over the world; coffee was first domesticated in Africa, wheat in the Middle East, alfalfa in Central Asia, oriental rice in Southern Asia, potatoes in South America, Maize and cotton in Central America and sunflowers in Northern America (Harlan, 1971). In today’s society, you can order a cup of coffee and a biscuit pretty much anywhere in the world. We are in an age where technology facilitates communication and travel, and crops that were once domesticated in a small region can be grown on an international scale. We have been introducing foreign crops to new countries for centuries, and thus creating a complex and diverse market for international agricultural trade. World trade in agriculture helped the development of many countries with agricultural advances, allowing for farmers to produce commercially. When farmers are capable of feeding a much larger population and engage in commercial trade, it allows for other people to buy food instead of having to cultivate it themselves. This allows the possibility of a diversity of refined jobs which all contribute to a developed society. But there is still developing countries where farming is the most popular career. In most cases, the agriculture in these countries is very different than that of developed countries, since they rely on subsistence farming. Subsistence farming is self-sufficient agriculture, where the farmer concentrates on growing enough to feed their family with very little or none left over product to sell or trade (Lee & Robinson, 2013). Canada is a North American developed country where the famers focus on making a profit in commercial agriculture, whereas Nepal is a developed country in Asia with a majority population is subsistence farmers. Even though these two countries couldn’t be further apart, it is possible for them to participate in international trade, and they have been doing so for many years now (Trade and Development Canada, 2013). But there is always the opportunity for new trade relations in order to help facilitate to faming in Nepal as well as further developing the economy in both countries. Timothy grass is a cool season forage grass which makes for great feed and fodder for livestock and it is grown in North American and Europe (Berg et al. 1996). This paper will explore and evaluate the possibility to initiate trade of timothy seed from Canada to Nepal.