Plants provide the greater part of the food for people and their domestic animals: much of human culture and civilisation came into being through agriculture. While a large number of plants have been used for food, a small number of staple crops including wheat, rice, and maize provide most of the food in the world today. In turn, animals provide much of the meat eaten by the human population, whether farmed or hunted, and until the arrival of mechanised transport, terrestrial mammals provided a large part of the power used for work and transport.