APHG Unit 6: Agricultural Patterns and Processes

Agricultural Revolutions

"There are three that you need to know: First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution), Second Agricultural Revolution, and Third Agricultural Revolution (Green Revolution)

First Agricultural Revolution

the domestication of plants and animals

Second Agricultural Revolution

the mechanization of agricultural practices which allows for the expansion of cultivation

Third Agricultural Revolution

the production of agriculture that includes the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that allowed for the expansion of cultivation - also known as the Green Revolution

Aquaculture

The farming of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms.

Bid-rent Theory

A geographic economic theory that refers to how the price and demand for real estate changes as the distance from the CBD increases. It states that different land users will compete with one another for land close to the city center, which leads to variations in the distribution of types of economic uses of land.

Biodiversity

The variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem.

Biotechnology

The utilization of biological systems to develop or make products.

Carrying Capacity

The number of people, living organisms, or crops that a region can support without environmental degradation.

Climate

The average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.

Clustered Rural Settlements

A settlement pattern in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each others fields.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and European populations.

Commercial Agriculture

The large-scale production of crops intended for widespread distribution to wholesalers or retail outlets.

Community-supported Agriculture

A community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.

Complex Commodity Chains

A series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is then exchanged on the world market.

Conservation Efforts

Any of many number of efforts that seek to protect natural resources.

Deforestation

The permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses.

Desertification

The process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agricultural practices.

Dietary Shifts

A change in the eating habits of a population as a result of involuntary (drought, crop failure, long term climate impacts) or voluntary (selective diet trends) processes.

Dispersed Rural Settlements

A settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms and/or houses rather than clustered villages.

Draining Wetlands

The process whereby wetlands are converted into fertile lands for cultivation through drainage, dredging, leveling or other methods.

Economies of Scale

Cost advantages that businesses and enterprises obtain through the scale of the operation, typically with per cost unit decreasing with an increasing scale.

Export Commodities

Those commodities produced primarily for sale to other countries.

Extensive Farming

An agricultural production system that uses small inputs of labor, fertilizers, and capital relative to the land area being farmed.

Fair Trade

Trade between companies in developed countries and producers in developing countries in which fair prices are paid to the producers.

Fertile Crescent

A region in the Middle East spanning Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan colloquially known as the cradle of civilization because settled farming first began to emerge, allowing for the formation of cities and civilizations.

Fertilizer

Any natural or synthetic product that is applied to the soils or plant tissues to supply one or more nutrients essential to the growth of a plant.

Food Deserts

Areas with little or no access to healthy and affordable food or limited or no access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Food Insecurity

The state of being without reliable access to sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

Genetically Modified Organisms

Any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques.

Global Supply Chain

The global scope of the sequence of processes involved in the production and distribution of a commodity.

Green Revolution

See Third Agricultural Revolution.

Hearths of Domestication

Various regions of the world where the domestication of either plants or animals occurred independent of one another (Know the associated region for the following: Wheat, Corn/Maize, Potato, Rice, Cow, Pig, Chicken).

High-Yield Seeds

Crops that are often GMO for desirable shape and size in order to produce more food per cultivation cycle than wild varieties.

Indus River Valley

Bronze age civilization in what is Pakistan and northwest India on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River.

Intensive Farming

Types of agriculture with high levels of input of labor and/or capital, and high value per unit area of land.

Irrigation

The application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals.

Land Cover Change

The loss of natural areas, particularly the loss of forest (and sometimes agricultural lands) to urban or exurban development.

Linear Rural Settlements

Settlement patterns whereby buildings are grouped to form a long line, usually with no discernable center of the settlement. These often occur as settlement occurs along a means of transit - like along the banks of a river or along rail tracks.

Local-food movements

This movement attempts to connect food producers and food consumers in the same geographic region in order to develop more self-reliant and resilient food networks, improve local economies, or impact health, environment, community, or society of a place.

Long Lot Survey System

A land survey system that provided settlers acreage that extends in long, narrow strips from the frontage along a river. Was prominent in French settled regions of the U.S. and Canada.

Market Gardening

Small scale production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold direclty to consumers and/or restaurants.

Mechanized Farming

The process of using machinery to increase farm worker productivity.

Mediterranean Climate

Warm, dry summers and cool, mild winters that have facilitated the growth of Meditarranean style agriculture with a focus on wheats, olives, dates, grape, and fishing.

Metes and Bounds Survey System

A land survey system that refers to a boundary defined by the measurement of each straight run, specified by a distance between terminal points, and an orietnation or direction (metes) and a general boundary descriptions, such as along a certain watercourse, a stone wall, etc. (bounds).

Mixed Crop and Livestock

An agricultural practice in which a farmer conducts different agricultural practices together in the same space or by utlizing each type of agriculture to support and benefit the other - like using livestock fertilizer as a natural alternative to chemicals and failed crops as an alternative to purchased feed.

Neolithic Revolution

The wide-scale transition that many human cultures experienced whereby populations switched lifestyles from one of hunting and gathering to one of sedentary life and agriculture.

Nomadic Herding

See Pastoral Nomadism

Organic Farming

Method of crop and livestock production that involves holistic systems designed to optimize productivity through methods like crop rotation, cover crops, balanced host/predator relationships, recycling of nutrients and organic residues, and minimization of the use of synthetic/chemical agricultural practices.

Pastoral Nomadism

A form of subsistence agriculture based upon the herding of domesticated animals. The type of animal and size of the herd is dependent on local customs and climate and landscape restrictions.

Pesticide

A substance used for destroying insects or other organisms harmful to the cultivation of crops.

Physical Environment

The part of the environment that includes purely physical factors like soil, climate, water supply.

Plantation Agriculture

A commercial agricultural practice where crops are grown over large land areas through monoculture of a cash crop; typically occurs in tropical and subtropical climates where cheap labor and land are available and desireable crops thrive.

Pollution

The presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.

Ranching

A commercial agricultural practice basedin the raising of herds of animals over large tracts of land.

Rural Land-Use Patterns

The variety of reasons why people have used lands in certain ways, often based upon economic decisions associated with land costs (rent) and profitability of crops. See von Thunen for more related to this concept.

Rural Settlement Patterns

The variety of reasons why people have settled or used rural lands in specific ways (think of the impact of settlement if we used a long-lot survey method vs a metes-and-bounds method)

Rural Survey Methods

The variety of ways in which societies have structured their rural lands through surveying and distribution of properties.

Second Agricultural Revolution

the mechanization of agricultural practices which allows for the expansion of cultivation

Shifting Cultivation

A form of agriculture, used especially in tropical locations, where a space is cleared of vegetation (often using slash-and-burn methods), cultivated until nutrients have been depleted, and then abandoned (left fallow) for a new location until the nutrients have been naturally restored.

Slash and Burn

A practice used in agriculture whereby existing vegetation is cut down and burned off before new seeds are sown.

Soil Salinization

The process of increasing the salt content found within soil that can be prevelant in irrigated areas, as all water has some dissolved salts that are left behind after plants use the water.

Subsistence Agriculture

The production of crops largely for the consumption of the family unit.

Sustainability

Meeting today's food and other needs (textiles that use cotton, wool) in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Terraces

The level, flat areas resembling a series of steps in mountainous/hilly terrain that are used to increase the areas available to be cultivated.

Township and Range Survey System

A land survey system used primarly in the Midwest and Western portions of the United States that divides lands into townships measuring 6 miles by 6 miles and divides each township into 36 equal squares. Townships lines run parallel to lines of latitude and allow measuring north and south. Range lines run parallel to lines of longitude and allow measuring east and west.

Tropical Climate

A non-arid climate in which all twelve months have mean temperatures of warmer than 64 degrees farenheit.

Urban Farming

The practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around urban areas. Oftentimes used to address the needs of urban populations by using vacant lots and producing in areas classified as food deserts.

Value-added Specialty Crops

Crops that are used in further processing (milling wheat into flour, making strawberries into jam), produced in a manner than enhances its value as demonstrated through a business plan (organically produced products) or those produced in a manner that results in the enhancement of the value of that commodity or product.

Von Thunen Model

A rural land use model (location theory) developed by Johann Heinrich Von Thunen that seeks to explain the types of economic activities that occur surrounding a market and has traditionally been used to explain agricultural production.