The word agriculture means "tak­ing care of the fields"-in other words, what we are used to thinking of as farming. And, in fact, agriculture and farming mean just about the same thing. But usually we would say "agriculture" when we mean the entire work and science of using the earth to produce food and other plants that are valuable to us; and we would use the word "farm­ing" to mean some particular branch of this, for example dairy farming, or chicken farming.