Harvesting Concept and meaning: We explain what harvesting is, what systems you can implement and what their ecological impact is. Also, what the agricultural cycle is.
What is harvesting?
Harvesting is the moment in the agricultural cycle when the sown agricultural goods (fruits, seeds, grains, vegetables, among others) are collected, once they are at their maximum point of maturity. This moment implies the end of the agricultural cycle, and consists of the separation of the valuable parts of the mother plant, for later processing and marketing.
The word harvest comes from the Latin collecta, formed by the prefix con– (“together with”) and the verb legere (“to choose”), and is a practice known to humanity since Neolithic times, when agriculture was discovered and the first crops were planted. For most of human history, harvesting was done manually, or with the help of hand tools, while today it generally consists of a mechanized procedure, often using machines called “harvesters.” You must read about Seven Deadly Sins once.
In various ancient cultures, harvesting was a time of joy and gratitude, when worship was paid to the gods who provided sustenance. For example, the ancient Romans celebrated the ludi cereals or “cereal games,” festivals in honor of Ceres, equivalent to the Greek goddess Demeter.
Thus, the action of harvesting, understood as the act of gathering or collecting the good, leaving behind the bad or the useless, is also used in the popular imagination as a metaphor for receiving what one has created: “you will reap what you have sown.”
The methods of harvesting and the ideal time for harvesting and sowing normally differ according to the harvested product. In fact, different fruits or vegetables are harvested taking into account the shelf life they have after reaching maturity, depending on the type of product:
1. Climacteric fruits:
These are those that can ripen after being harvested (and therefore are harvested while still green, to prevent them from deteriorating during transportation), such as tomatoes.
2. Non-climacteric fruits:
Those that can ripen only on the plant, such as peppers or bell peppers.
Harvests are not always the same, and can be good (abundant) or bad (scarce), depending on the climate, the sowing methods and the presence of pests and parasites.
The development of agriculture has largely tried to control these three elements as much as possible, to guarantee the correct growth of plants and the preservation of their fruits. For this purpose, fertilizers, pesticides and various techniques of human intervention in cultivation are used, such as artificial selection or even genetic engineering. Maybe you should definitely read about Countries of South America once.
agricultural cycle
The agricultural cycle is the set of stages that make up agricultural activity and that are repeated annually at regular periods. This cycle or circuit is more or less the same for all types of crops, and includes the following fundamental stages:
Preparing the soil
Once it is known what foods are going to be grown, farmers must prepare the soil to ensure that it contains the necessary inputs for plant growth. This may involve using manures and fertilizers, or plowing the soil to create furrows in which to deposit the seeds and allow for proper irrigation.
Sowing
Sowing consists of introducing the seeds, sprouts or plants into the prepared soil. This is usually done in spring or summer, always depending on the type of crop. Sowing is done according to various techniques, many of which take into account soil protection and maximum use of resources.
Monitoring
After being planted, the plants germinate and grow at a variable rate, and require a series of care and attention, such as the appropriate amount of irrigation, pest control, among others. If everything goes well, the plants grow and produce fruits, which will mature over time until they are ready for harvest.
Harvest
The final stage of the circuit is the collection of mature agricultural products, whether fruits, cereals or seeds, and their processing or handling to store them and then take them to their destination, which may be direct trade with the consumer, or some secondary industry that uses them as raw material.
Harvest systems
Harvests are carried out according to two different systems: the traditional or manual method, and the modern or mechanized method. The application of one or the other depends on multiple factors, such as the available resources or the type of crop to be harvested.
The manual system
The manual harvest method is the oldest known and the one that has been used most throughout history. In this process, the farmer or his workers collect the agricultural goods directly from the ground or from the plants with their hands and place them in baskets or wheelbarrows, then transport them to other spaces where they undergo secondary processes, such as drying, roasting or fermentation. It is an economical and ecological method, but slow and inefficient.
The mechanized system
The mechanized method is one that uses modern technologies, that is, machines to process the crop and separate the agricultural goods from the rest of the plant.
These technologies can consist of large harvesting machines, as in the case of cereals, or mechanical tools that facilitate the work of the harvesters, allowing a faster and more profitable harvest, although it often causes ecological damage and has a considerable initial cost.
Ecological impact of crops
Agriculture, despite being an ancient economic activity, is not exempt from having an ecological impact, that is, from causing damage to the ecosystem. These ecological damages can be summarized as:
- Deforestation and destruction of ecosystems to enlarge the cultivation platform, especially in extensive agriculture that requires a lot of surface area for planting. This surface area is obtained by cutting down and burning forests and other environments of biological diversity, to plant plants of the same type in their place.
- The impoverishment of soils, especially in monocultures, that is, in cases where the same plant is planted over and over again, which takes away nutrients from the soil. This can be avoided through crop rotation.
- Soil and water pollution, through the use of pesticides and agrotoxins to combat fungi, bacteria and insects, which destroy even living beings that are not dangerous for crops, and also have a residual effect on groundwater or rivers, lakes and seas, due to the runoff of rainwater.
- The damage caused by agricultural machinery to soil, either due to its weight or the fuels and lubricants it releases.
