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Agribusiness
Defined as an industrialized, corporate form of agricultural production.
Largely a result of globalization, demonstrates agriculture’s extension into secondary, tertiary, and quaternary sectors of the economy through food production (secondary), marketing and distribution of food products (tertiary), and agricultural research (quaternary).
Small number of large corporations rather than a large number of independent farmers control agricultural production.
Agricultural Economic Systems
In subsistence economies, goods and services created for use by the producer and his or her family.
In commercial (market) economies, producers produce goods and services with the goal of making a profit.
In planned economies, government determines both supply and price of goods and services produced by citizens of that country.
Very few pure examples of each type of economy exist. In the United States, traditionally a commercial economy, both planned (price supports for various agricultural goods) and subsistence (families growing their own gardens) economies exist.
Agricultural Production in the United States
Truck and fruit farming exists in the relativity mild climates of central California and the southeast coast.
Range livestock dominates agricultural production in the western region of the country.
The Midwest states, including Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and parts of Kansas and South Dakota, produce feed grains and livestock and are collectively known as the “Corn Belt.”"
Mixed farming with crop specialties, such as cotton, dominate agricultural production in the southwest.
Wheat and small grains are common in the states and parts of states in the Midwest that do not concentrate on corn production.
Agriculture
Defined as the growing of crops or tending of livestock for subsistence purposes and/or for sale or exchange.
Most economically significant primary economic activity (in terms of revenue).
In both developed and developing economies, share of total labor force employed in agriculture is declining.
Share of labor force employed in agriculture much higher in developing regions than developed regions.
Aquaculture
Basically fish farming, involving breeding of fish in freshwater ponds, lakes, or canals or in estuaries or bays that have been fenced off.
Increasingly responsible for global fish production; accounts for over 30 percent of fish production in recent years.
As with any technological advance in food production, aquaculture carries negative environmental risks, the largest being damage that often results to wild fish from interacting with farmed fish that have escaped from fish farms.
Biodiversity
The variety of life forms to be found in a given area.
Biopharming
A particular form of biotechnology in which genes from other life forms (e.g., plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, or humans) are inserted into a host plant.
The goal is “pharma-crops” or basically plant-based pharmaceuticals.
Biotechnology
Includes all technological improvements on biological systems to either make or enhance specific agricultural goods or food products.
Example include genetically modified organisms in which technology is used to alter genetic makeup of plants or animals, production and introduction of enzymes that increase speed of fermentation in wines or yogurt, or ability to fortify common agricultural products with vitamins and minerals.
Capital-Intensive vs. Labor-Intensive Agriculture
Capital-intensive methods use mechanical goods, including machinery, tools, vehicles, and facilitates, to produce large amounts of agricultural goods, a process requiring very little human labor.
Labor-intensive goods use human hands in large abundance to produce a given amount of output.
Distinction between the two is not always result of the level of technological innovation; some agricultural products require substantial labor inputs, such as strawberries, which must be handpicked.
Columbian Exchange
The widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, people, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Commercial Agriculture
involves food production primarily for sale from a farm.
Often involves sale of farm goods to food-processing companies rather than directly to consumers.
Extensive commercial agriculture includes grain farming, grazing, and other activities that require minimal inputs and large pieces of land.
Intensive commercial agriculture includes dairy products, fruits, vegetables, flowers, factory-farmed meat, and any other good requiring high input (labor and capital).
Commercial Grain Farming
Includes wheat and corn; especially prevalent in American Great Plains, southern Russia, and increasingly in China.
Large portion of output goes toward feeding livestock.
In general, meat generates more profit than grain at market; thus, many farmers chose to convert grain into meat by feeding it livestock.
Commercial Livestock Production
Two major forms include livestock ranching and dairying.
Livestock ranching is widespread throughout much of Australia, western North America, South America, southern Africa, and western Asia.
Transhumance is seasonal movement of livestock between different ranges, for example, to the mountains in summer and to valleys in winter.
Dairying is especially prevalent in northern Europe and the northern United States.
Commercial Chains
The set of connected activities involved in the production of a single good or service.
Includes the relationship between buyers and suppliers and flows of materials as well as finances and knowledge.
Community Support Agriculture
A community of individual that supports a farm operation in order to share both the benefits and the risks of food production.
Crop Rotation
A farming method that involves rotating the sequence of crops planted in a particular field to avoid depleting nutrients in the soil as different crops use different nutrients in the growing process. Through rotation, the soil can be replenished without the use of synthetic fertilizers.
Deforestation
In rapidly growing developing countries, the need for fuel-wood is increasing quite dramatically, leading to deforestation.
Significant portions of tropical forests are being converted to agricultural production (ten to twelve million hectares annually).
Occurs in tropical areas at a rate exceeding reforestation by ten to fifteen times.
In Central and South America millions of hectares converted to pasture on an annual basis, primarily for beef cattle destines for the American meat market.
Desertification
When marginal lands, typically on the fringes of the desert, such as the Sahel Region south of the Sahara Desert in Africa, are overcultivated or overgrazed, the soil gets stripped of any existing vegetation and becomes increasingly desert-like.
Environmental Implications of Agriculture
Pesticides, such as DDT, have harmed wildlife populations; polluted rivers, lakes, and oceans; and worked their way through the food chain all the way to human beings.
Topsoil loss, or erosion, is particularly problematic in areas with fragile soils, steel sloped, or torrential seasonal rains.
Salinization occurs when soils in arid areas are heavily irrigated. Applied water quickly evaporates leaving salty residues, rendering soil infertile.
Desertification is the process by which formerly fertile lands become increasingly arid, unproductive, and desert-like.
Extensive Subsistence Agriculture
Two dominant systems include nomadic herding and shifting cultivation.
Nomadic herding involves seasonal movement of herds (e.g., goats, sheep, camels, and yaks) over large territories.
Hers supports relatively small populations with meat, fur, blood, milk, and dung.
Shifting cultivation, also called, slash-and-burn or swidden, involves hacking down existing vegetation, burning it to release nutrients into soil, and then planting a variety of crops (maize, millet, rice, manioc, cassava, yams, etc.).
Shifting cultivation is prevalent in equatorial regions across the globe.
Extensive vs. Intensive Agriculture
Extensive agriculture involves large areas of land and minimal labor input per acre.
Typically produces less and supports smaller populations than intensive agriculture.
Intensive agriculture involves cultivation of smaller plots of land with substantial labor inputs and typically more chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides); produces more food per acre to support higher populations.
Fair Trade
Trade between companies is developed countries and producers in developing countries in which fair prices are paid to producers.
Feedlots/CAFOs
Often called CAFOs (Contained or Confined Animal Feeding Operations); animals concentrates in small spaces and given antibiotics, hormones, and other fattening grains to prepare them for slaughter at a much quicker pace than traditional forms of raising livestock.
Increasingly criticized as speculation regarding links to antibiotic resistance and certain bacterial outbreaks (e.g., E.coli, salmonella, and mad cow disease) become increasingly prevalent.
Emit large amounts of greenhouse gases and a tremendous amount of waste.
Fertile Crescent
Sometimes through of as the “cradle of civilization,” it was once the hearth of early agriculture, which led to its being a hearth of early civilization.
Located in the Middle East, the area’s fertile soils were attributed to it location in the Euphrates, Nile, and Tigris Rivers floodplains.
While originally thought to be the sole hearth of civilization, research increasingly shows agricultural innovation independent of this region in other parts of the world.
First Agricultural Revolution
First agricultural revolution involved a transition from hunting and gathering societies to sedentary agricultural societies through domestication of plants and animals.
Some argue that women were most likely first to domesticate plants as their duty in hunting and gathering societies was gathering seeds, nuts, and berries, providing them with necessary knowledge for vegetative planting.
Carl Sauer, in Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, proposed several independent hearths of agriculture in the Middle East, South and Central America, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.
Fishing
Global fish supply, which accounts for about 15 percent of human animal protein consumption, comes from either inland catch (fish from lakes, ponds, or rivers); fish farming (controlled production of fish in a contained environment); or marine catch (wild fish harvested on coastal waters of high seas).
The United Nations report that all seventeen of the world’s major oceanic fishing areas are fished at or beyond capacity.
Overfishing and effects of pollution on fish stocks have led to dramatic decrease in fish stocks over the last couple of decades.
Food Desert
A Food Desert, like it sounds, describes a pace where it is difficult to access high-quality, healthy food, such as fresh fruits/vegetables, meat, and dairy products.
Access is limited by either cost or distance/transportation availability, or both.
Food deserts typically exist in urban rather than rural areas.
Food Production vs. Agriculture
Agriculture does not always lead to food, and food is not necessarily always produced through agriculture.
Some common agricultural goods are raised for nonfood purposes: corn for ethanol, rubber for tires, leather for shoes, and so on.
Many food products are not produced through agricultural methods, such as artificial sweeteners, processed cheeses, and so on.
Food Regime
The links that exist between food producers, food consumers, and investment/accumulation opportunities that support a dominant type of food during a particular time period.
For example, in core countries, the current food regime is characterized by fresh fruits and vegetables; and in the last 25 years, fresh produce through organic agriculture.
Food Security
Refers to reliable access, at all scales (individual, household, country), to enough food to ensure active and health lives.
When a community is food insecure, that means the people don’t have reliable access to health foods; these communities are often called food deserts.
Forestry
Generally restricted to forests in upper mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and equatorial zones of Central Africa, South and Central America, and Southeast Asia.
Half of the global logging harvest is for industrial consumption; the majority of this wood comes from developed countries, including Canada, Russia, and the United States.
Other half of the logging harvest is for fuel-wood and charcoal; this occurs primarily in developing regions where wood sources are the primary energy supply.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
Plants or animals whose DNA has been genetically modified, often by combining DNA from a similar plant or animal species.
Have several advantages including less need for chemical inputs and greater outputs on smaller pieced of land, allowing for greater food security for growing populations.
Have several disadvantages including unknown health effects, effects on pollinating insect populations, and in cost-prohibitive for small-scale farmers or farmers in developing regions of the globe.
Globalization of Agriculture
Globalization affects agriculture through improvements in transportation and communications technologies.
Agribusinesses functionally integrate agricultural production on a global scale, which, along with increasing free trade, allows for easy exchange of agricultural goods in global economy.
Visiting a produce section of any large grocery store in the developed world provides evidence of globalization of agriculture through the variety of goods offered year-round and the variety of places from which those products originate.
Green Revolution
Rural Survey Methods
Long-lot surveying is French, and houses exist on narrow lots perpendicular to a river, giving each household equal access to river resources.
Metes and bounds are English and use local geography with directions and distances to define boundaries for a particular piece of land.
Township and range is a U.S. survey system that divided land west of Ohio after the Louisiana Purchas according to 6-square-mile blocks (township) that were further divided into 1-square-mile blocks (range). The ranges were typically further broken down and sold or given to people to develop.
Second Agricultural Revolution
Coincided with the Industrial Revolution; involved the mechanization of agricultural production, advanced in transportation, development of large-scale irrigation, and corresponding changes to consumption of agricultural goods (as production became more efficient).
Shifting Cultivation/Slash-and-Burn/Swidden
Shifting cultivation describes a system in which farmers rotate the fields where cultivation occurs in order to maintain soil fertility.
This is common in tropical areas where soil fertility is low. Slash-and-burn agriculture involves cutting the forest/vegetative material and burning it in order to provide nutrients in the soil.
Swidden refers to the land cleared for cultivation via slash-and-burn techniques.
The Boserup Hypothesis
Esther Boserup, a Danish economist in the mid-twentieth century, countered Malthus’s population growth hypothesis with her book The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Under Population Pressure.
Boserup observed that agricultural production can accommodate growing populations through increases in soil fertility (by using various chemical inputs), which allow land to produce more food for more people.
Transhumance
Pastoral practice of seasonal migration of livestock (e.g., goats, sheep, yaks, etc.) between mountains in summer and lowland pasture areas during winter.
Transportation and Agriculture
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, transportation has had dramatic impacts on common agriculture.
Today, many isolated spots on the earth’s surface remain subsistence economies simply because of limited access to other parts of the world.
Modern technological advanced in transportation, such as refrigerated trucks, have allowed farmers to ship items at great distances.
Tropical Plantations
Grow crops such as sugarcane and coffee.
Widespread throughout the tropics, in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
Typically have some form of foreign control, either through investments, management or marketing.
Many of their crops, while suitable for the local environment, are not native to it and almost always exported to other countries rather than consumed locally.
Urban Agriculture
Establishment of agriculture practices in or very near to a city.
Long popular in developing countries; developed countries are seeing a resurgence in urban agricultural production as increased sensitivity to food security/health concerns motivate communities to have greater knowledge of and control over the origin of their food.
Urban Sprawl and Agriculture
In many areas of the United States and throughout the developed world, urban sprawl has overtakes and continues to overtake formerly productive agricultural areas, converting fields and orchards to parking lots and subdivisions.
Many local governments and planning commissions seeks to halt this through zoning of agricultural lands; however, for many farmers, especially in places with expensive real estate, selling land to developers proves more profitable than farming it.
Wind Farms
Sometimes called windmill parks, these areas of land use giant wind turbines that convert wind energy into a renewable energy source.
von Thünen Model
von Thünen Results
For local food production economies, the von Thünen model does well predicting agricultural patterns in that intensive goods are generally grown close to market, whereas extensive goods are grown farther away.
Model can be altered to account for transportation networks and competing markets, resulting in changed in shape and size of zones of productivity surrounding the market.
With globalization of agriculture, the von Thünen model is becoming nearly obsolete as local food economies are replaced by large-scale agricultural production.
