Methodology is a contextual framework for research, a coherent and logical scheme based on views, beliefs, and values, that guides the choices researchers make. It comprises the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge such that the methodologies employed from differing disciplines vary depending on their historical development. This creates a continuum of methodologies that stretch across competing understandings of how knowledge and reality are best understood. This situates methodologies within overarching philosophies and approaches. Some definitions of methodology include: 1. The analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline 2. The systematic study of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline 3. The study or description of methods Agriculture Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock. 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. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture into the twenty-first. Etymology and scope The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agriculture, from ager, "field", and culture, cultivation or growing. While agriculture usually refers to human activities, certain species of ant, termite and beetle have been cultivating crops for up to 60 million years. Agriculture is defined with varying scopes, in its broadest sense using natural resources to "produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fibre, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services. Thus defined, it includes arable farming, horticulture, animal husbandry and forestry, but horticulture and forestry are in practice often excluded Agricultural science Agricultural science is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. It covers topics such as agronomy, plant breeding and genetics, plant pathology, crop modelling, soil science, entomology, production techniques and improvement, study of pests and their management, and study of adverse environmental effects such as soil degradation, waste management, and bioremediation.