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Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry for food and non-food products.[1] Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.
Shropshire (/ˈʃrɒpʃər, -ʃɪər/; historically Salop[3] and abbreviated Shrops) is a landlocked ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south, and the Welsh counties of Wrexham and Powys to the west. The largest settlement is Telford, and Shrewsbury is the county town.
The county has an area of 3,487 square kilometres (1,346 sq mi) and a population of 498,073. Telford (155,570), in the east of the county, and Shrewsbury (76,782), in the centre, are the only large towns. Shropshire is otherwise rural and characterised by market towns such as Oswestry (15,613), Bridgnorth (12,212), and Newport (11,387). The county contains two districts, Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin, which are both unitary areas.
Shropshire is generally flat in the north and hilly in the south, where the Shropshire Hills AONB covers about a quarter of the county, including The Wrekin, Clee Hills, Stiperstones, Long Mynd, and Wenlock Edge.[4][5] Part of the Fenn's, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, which extends into Wales, occupies the low-lying north west of the county.[6] The River Severn, Great Britain's longest river, runs through the county in a wide, flat valley before exiting into Worcestershire south of Bridgnorth. The village of Edgmond, near Newport, is the location of the lowest recorded temperature (in terms of weather) in England and Wales.[7]
There is evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age human occupation in Shropshire, including the Shropshire bulla pendant. The hillfort at Old Oswestry dates from the Iron Age, and the remains of the city of Viroconium Cornoviorum date from the Roman period.[8][9] During the Anglo-Saxon era the area was part of Mercia. During the High Middle Ages the county was part of the Welsh Marches, the border region between Wales and England; from 1472 to 1689 Ludlow was the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which administered justice in Wales and Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.[10] During the English Civil War Shropshire was Royalist, and Charles II fled through the county — famously hiding in an oak tree — after his final defeat at the Battle of Worcester.[11] The area around Coalbrookdale is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[12][13]
