Innovations in agriculture : a systemic perspective

Necessity, it is often said, is the mother of Invention. The same might also be said for innovation. New things are made (inventions) and new things are done (innovations) typically in response to some challenging circumstances or other across a whole gamut of human endeavours. And where the challenges are shared across communities of folk with equitable access to resources, then such innovative responses as emerge, typically 'diffuse' across the communities with minimum impediment. Agriculture is clearly no exception to this submission, and indeed it could be suggested that alone with tool making and art, it was among the first of the technological innovations that have come to characterize what might be referred to as human civilization.