Introduction and Overview › Glossary for the Networking Language · 5 min read
Agriculture describes human-led work with soil, plants, animals, water, landscapes, seasons, and local provision.
For us at TEIKEI, agriculture means more than the technical production of food.
Agriculture is a living connection between place, people, soil, knowledge, care, and responsibility.
It is rooted where people are connected to a specific piece of land, where provision for a region emerges, and where knowledge, labor, and responsibility are not separated from the place.
For us, agriculture has at least two essential characteristics:
Both belong together. A farm can produce plants without being agriculture in the deeper sense. The decisive factor is: Does a living relationship exist between land, people, place, and provision?
Agriculture is connected to a place.
It relates to the people who live, eat, work, learn, support, and take responsibility there.
This local embeddedness is evident, for example, in the fact that:
Without this embeddedness, food production can easily become extraction.
Then soil, labor, water, energy, or products are drawn from a place without the place itself being strengthened.
Agriculture is shaped by human hands.
The more people are consciously involved in an agricultural process, the more strongly agriculture becomes experienceable as a living connection.
This is not just about physical labor but also about observation, care, decision-making, passing on knowledge, craftsmanship, animal husbandry, seed care, soil building, harvesting, processing, coordination, and relationships.
Agriculture needs people who perceive, respond, learn, and take responsibility.
If technical systems almost completely replace human labor, the character shifts—then it is no longer agriculture at the center, but industrial production.
Industrial production can produce food. However, it is not automatically agriculture in the full sense.
The difference is not just in the size of an operation or the technology used.
The decisive question is:
Is the process still embedded in a relationship with soil, place, people, knowledge, and provision?
If production is primarily focused on efficiency, control, scaling, and decoupling, it loses essential characteristics of agriculture.
Then, an agricultural connection becomes an industrial production facility.
Vertical farming can produce plants.
For us at TEIKEI, however, vertical farming is not automatically agriculture.
Vertical farming usually operates in closed technical systems, independent of soil, landscape, seasons, and local agricultural culture.
It can be a technical form of food production in certain situations.
However, it does not replace the agricultural relationship between soil, people, place, landscape, knowledge, and provision.
The term "farming" can be misleading here if it creates the impression that it is agriculture in the comprehensive sense.
What is important to us: Vertical farming can be production. Agriculture requires more than production.
Agriculture contributes to local or regional provision.
It does not just produce goods but creates a foundation for people to eat, live, learn, and share responsibility in a place.
At TEIKEI, agriculture is therefore closely linked to:
Agriculture is strong where it does not have to act in isolation but is supported by a resilient community.
Agriculture is also a place of knowledge.
This knowledge arises through observation, experience, passing on, and long-term relationship with the land.
This includes, among other things:
If this knowledge is lost, agriculture becomes more vulnerable to dependency, simplification, and decoupling.
If this knowledge is shared, agriculture strengthens the entire place.
Agriculture becomes extraction when a place is primarily used to extract products, labor, or resources.
This can happen when:
For us, this boundary is important. Agriculture should not weaken the place from which it lives. It should nourish, care for, and maintain relationships with it.
To determine whether a process is agriculture in the deeper sense, the following questions can help:
The more of these questions can be answered with "yes," the stronger the agricultural character.
For TEIKEI, agriculture is a foundation of community-supported provision.
It connects people with the origin of their food.
It makes visible that nutrition does not begin with the product but with the soil, water, hands, knowledge, and responsibility.
Agriculture is therefore not an isolated production sector—it is a space of relationships.
It keeps soil, people, provision, and future connected.
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By the TEIKEI editorial team, with support from AI (ChatGPT)
Created on June 22, 2026 · Last updated on October 10, 2026
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