Many (tropical) plants use toxins to protect themselves. This is as true in Amazonian rainforest as it is in Northern coniferous forest." - Marcus Wischik. Without some form of protection the trees would be stripped bare and smaller plants would be completely devastated, and because plants stand still, they cannot run away. "Plants are faced with a dilemma while they need to attract beneficial pollinators and seed dispensers, they must also minimize the damage caused by the marauding army of herbivores. To do so, some special seed germination techniques to germinate them more quickly may be best used. Despite this, anyone who wishes so, may still grow tropical crops, e.g., fruits, from seeds.
By bypassing the seed stage, plants can greatly accelerate their reproductive cycles. However, where the weather is normally conducive to growth year-round, plants reproducing plants through means other than seeds is often advantageous. Seeds are necessary for plant embryos to survive the winter and other harsh conditions such as drought. Many tropical food plants are propagated by cuttings. To address this problem together with an approach to more small-scale farming crops, substantial interest exists today in creating a second Green Revolution, based on sustainable agricultural practices and geared towards (small-scale) farmers with limited financial resources. The Green Revolution had a flaw although the crops gave more yield, they were more subject to disease, since this was not a primary concern of the program. The total cost of the Green Revolution by 1990 was about US$100 million. The growth of crop yields was such that agriculture was able to outstrip population growth - per capita production increased every year following 1950 - with Asia leading the way. Funded initially by the Rockefeller Foundation, it aimed to improve corn, rice, and other cereal cultivators – breeding plants that would produce more grain for the same amount of effort.įrom that point, it expanded out to improved basic farming practices, particularly for rice farmers. The " Green Revolution" was an agricultural improvement program undertaken in the tropics. This in turn pushed many small-scale farmers on to ever more marginal land, as the better quality land was consolidated into larger farms. When they did succeed they tended to heavily favor farmers with substantial land holdings, as a high percentage of temperate agricultural practices are economically "scale-based" and favor large scale production. Due to differences in climate, soils, and patterns of land ownership, these largely failed. The second half of the 20th century saw many attempts to duplicate in the tropics farming practices that had been successful in temperate climates. Most temperate zone agricultural techniques are inappropriate for tropical areas. Such labeling is very useful when discussing agriculture, because what works in one area of the world will normally work in a similar area somewhere else, even if that area is on the opposite side of the globe. Common terms would include the humid-tropics ( rainforests) the arid-tropics ( deserts and dry areas) or monsoon zones (those areas that have well defined wet/dry seasons and experience monsoons).
When people discuss the tropics, it is normal to use generalized labels to group together similar tropical areas. While growing food for local consumption is the core of tropical agriculture, cash crops (normally crops grown for export) are also included in the definition.
Worldwide more human beings gain their livelihood from agriculture than any other endeavor the majority are self-employed subsistence farmers living in the tropics. Coconut plucking in Kerala, India by using Coconut Tree Climber.