Short answers, pulled from the story.
Farming dates back to the Neolithic era, making it one of the defining characteristics of that period. By the Bronze Age, the Sumerians had a specialized agricultural labor force by 5000-4000 BCE, relying heavily on irrigation and three-person harvest teams.
Over half a billion farmers worldwide are smallholders, most of them in developing countries. Together they economically support almost two billion people. Women constitute more than 40% of all agricultural employees globally.
In the United States of the 1930s, one farmer could produce enough food to feed only three other consumers. A modern farmer produces enough to feed well over a hundred people, though some researchers note this figure does not account for the full energy and resource inputs farming requires.
The word farmer originally referred to a person who collected taxes from tenants working land owned by a landlord, not someone who worked the land themselves. Over time the term shifted to describe the person actually doing the farming. Previous terms for a farmer included churl and husbandman.
The earliest evidence of horse domestication dates to around 4000 BCE. Dogs were domesticated earlier, in East Asia about 15,000 years ago, while goats and sheep were domesticated around 8000 BCE and pigs by 7000 BCE.
Farming is a particularly dangerous industry involving heavy machinery, bites and stings from insects such as scorpions and fire ants, and chronic muscle and joint injuries. In the United States, farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, reflecting the mental stress of unpredictable weather and market conditions.