What are food crops?
Food crops are any plants deliberately grown with the primary purpose of consuming humans or animals. This definition separates the food crop from wild edible vegetation, pastures and edible food used for other purposes. In this category, the vast majority of fruits, vegetables and food based on grain began. This is one of the three main divisions of useful growing plants, the other two are wild plants and non -food crops.
There are two basic criteria that distinguish food crops from other plants. The first is that one must intentionally plant and/or take care of them, and the second is that they must be primarily used for food. Both of these factors are absolute requirements for the term.
The first is primarily used to separate food crops from edible wild crops. In principle, this criterion creates a line that says onions grown in the garden are food crops, but those selected in the forest are a wild crop. The only gray area in this rule isEstablished cultivation and care of plant. If you choose a wild berry, it would be a wild crop; If this person cleaned the weeds and built a fence around the same shrubs, it can switch to food crop.
The second main factor requires the plant to be used for food. If more than half of the useful material harvested from the plant are used to feed animals or humans, then the plant is food. The plant can undergo significant processing, such as creating corn syrup without changing the designation. This rule separates crops that do not eat, such as tobacco, and plants that could be consumed, but are not used for food such as corn used to produce ethanol.
Farmers separate useful plants into three wide categories: food, non -food and wild. In addition to these three useful groups, there is a single main unusable group withNuisance Plants, as well as several specialized groups. The operating plant is literally anything that is not useful and grows in an area where one does not want it. This classification could cover anything from crab route to wild roses with the same precision.
Two other useful groups severely overlap food crops. Non -food crops share the first criteria, but not the second. This means that people intentionally grow them, but they don't eat them. These plants could be anything from cotton to cannabis to potatoes grown into biopolymers. Wild crops can be food or non -food, but cannot be intentionally cultivated or taken care of.