The practise of producing plants and cattle is known as agriculture.  Agriculture was a significant factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, as it enabled humans to live in cities by creating food surpluses from tamed species. Agriculture has a long history dating back thousands of years. Farmers began planting wild grains roughly 11,500 years ago, after harvesting them for at least 105,000 years. Domestication of pigs, sheep, and cattle began over 10,000 years ago. Plants were grown independently in at least 11 different parts of the world. In the twentieth century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture grew to dominate agricultural output, despite the fact that about 2 billion people still relied on subsistence agriculture.

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals including pesticides and fertilisers, and technical advancements have dramatically enhanced food yields while wreaking havoc on the environment. Selective breeding and contemporary animal husbandry procedures have enhanced meat output in a similar way, but they have prompted concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Contributions to global warming, aquifer depletion, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and growth hormones in industrial meat production are all environmental concerns. Agriculture is both a source and a victim of environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and global warming, all of which can lead to agricultural production reductions. Although some genetically modified organisms are outlawed in some countries, they are routinely used.

Foods, textiles, fuels, and raw materials are the four basic categories of agricultural products (such as rubber). Cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, oils, meat, milk, fungus, and eggs are all food classes. Agriculture employs about one-third of the world's workforce, second only to the service sector, despite a global trend of diminishing agricultural employment in recent decades.

Agriculture allowed the human population to expand many times above what could be supported by hunting and gathering. Agriculture began separately in several places of the world and includes a varied variety of species in at least 11 different origin centres. Wild grains have been harvested and consumed since at least 105,000 years ago. The eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas, and flax, were cultivated in the Levant from roughly 11,500 years ago. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, with the earliest known cultivation dating back to 5,700 BC. Between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago, sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia. Cattle were domesticated from wild aurochs around 10,500 years ago in modern-day Turkey and Pakistan. Pig farming began in Eurasia, which includes Europe, East Asia, and Southwest Asia, where wild boar were domesticated for the first time around 10,500 years ago. Potatoes, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs, were domesticated in the Andes of South America between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago. Around 9,000 years ago, New Guineans cultivated sugarcane and certain root vegetables. Sorghum was domesticated 7,000 years ago in Africa's Sahel region. Cotton was first domesticated 5,600 years ago in Peru, and then independently in Eurasia. By 6,000 years ago, wild teosinte had been domesticated into maize in Mesoamerica. Several theories have been proposed to explain the historical beginnings of agriculture. The Natufian culture in the Levant and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China, for example, show an initial era of intensification and rising sedentism during the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society. Then, previously harvested wild stands began to be planted, and the wild stands gradually became domesticated.