The essence of agriculture was borne from the need to ensure food on the table of man to sustain humanity. The term ‘agriculture’ was derived from two Latin words – ‘Ager’, meaning field and ‘Culture’ meaning cultivation. Put together, it is ‘field cultivation’. This is the essence of agriculture as a practice. Nowadays, agriculture is broadly defined to cover both crop and animal production.

The earliest men lived by hunting, fishing and gathering wild leaves, fruits, snails and insects for food and sustenance. That was how the early men derived their essence in agriculture and that has evolved today into the modern agriculture we have today. As men progressed, they started to domesticate animals and cultivate certain crops using crude implements. Peasant farming came along as a more advance way of farming to ensure food sufficiency. Small size farms were cultivated using better but still crude farm implements to produce more crops with the excess sold for income.    

Agriculture has developed and evolved from hunting and gathering to basic subsistence agriculture, and of recent commercial scale agriculture. This commercial scale of agriculture cultivate large hectares of land mainly for economic purpose. This practice involve huge investment in capital/money, labour, skills and management. Commercial agriculture produce crops like rubber, cocoa, oil palm, coffee which are referred to as cash crops.

Modern trends in agriculture are tilting towards sustainable agriculture. This new essence of agriculture is to build sustainable agricultural production while maintaining good production environment within the soil and in the atmosphere.