agriculture flash cards

Agricultural practices and land use patterns

Influenced by physical environment and climate conditions

Tropical climate

Hot human climate that produces certain plants such as cassava, banana, sugar, canes, sweet potato, papaya, rice, maze

Mediterranean climate

Dry summer climate that produces certain fruits, vegetables and grains, such as grapes, olives, figs dates, tomatoes, zucchini, wheat, barley, and prevail, along the shores of the Mediterranean in parts of California and Oregon in central Chile and South Africa, Africa’s Cape and in parts of southwestern and southern Australia

Climate conditions

How weather affects agricultural purposes and products

Intensive farming practices

Farming that uses significance amounts of labor and money

Market gardening

Small scale, food, production, fruits, veggies for local markets

Plantation agriculture

Cash crops, coffee Cotton sugar, tea, grown in larger states, usually for export a legacy of colonization

Mixed crop in livestock systems

Combination of cash crops and livestock to complement land and labor demands across the year

Extensive farming practices

Farming that uses a smaller amount, amounts of labor and money in relation to the land area

Shifting cultivation/slash and burn

Cultivation of crops and tropical force clearing using natural rotation System

The forest vegetation is cleared by cutting and burning

The Results is a layer of ash that contributes to the soils fertility

Farmers move to another parcel of land when the soil becomes infertile

Nomadic herding, Pastoral, nomadism, and transhumance

seasonal migration of domesticated, livestock usually fix territory between Highlands and lowlands

Rural land use patterns

Shaped by agricultural practices

Rural settlement patterns

clustered dispersed linear

Long lot survey system

Divided into narrow parcel, stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals, giving each household equal access to water Resources

Reflects a particular approach to survey that was common with French areas In America

Early hearths of domestication of plants and animals

Southwest Asia

Indus River Valley

Southeast Asia

Central America

Fertile crescent

Hearth of early agriculture and early civilization most credited with Southwest Asia

Meets and bounds survey system

Survey of irregularly shaped tracks of land

Relies on descriptions of land ownership in reference to natural features such as stream hills trees, etc., that was common in English areas around America

Township and Range survey system

Rectangular Survey system used by the US federal government to divide the land into gridlock patterns

Designed by Thomas Jefferson to facilitate the dispersal of settlers evenly across farmland of the US interior

First agricultural revolution

Dating back 10,000 years when humans achieve plant an animal domestication

Colombian exchange

facilitated the global diffusion of plants, animals, disease, diseases, human population, culture, technology, and ideas

globalization of agriculture

Improvements of transportation and communication technologies create a variety of goods offered around when they traditionally were only available seasonally

Second agricultural revolution

Improved methods of cultivation harvesting and storage of food that started in the middle ages and then benefited from the industrial revolution with them use of machines and new technology

Industrial revolution

The transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial society with the introduction of power drive machines and manufacturing mining transportation in agriculture

Green Revolution

High-yield seeds increased use of chemicals, mechanized farming in elaborate irrigation systems

Subsistence agriculture

Only enough food is cultivated to survive. No surplus to sell and often land is held in common.

Commercial agriculture

The production of crops for sale

Monoculture

Growing one crop in a farm system at a given time

Multi cropping

Growing several crops in a farm system

Monocropping

Growing one crop in a farm system year after year

Bid rent theory

Theory that shows what various land users are prepared to unable to pay for access to the market center

The further from the market, the lower the cost for a sight

Intensive and extensive farming practices are in part by land costs

Extension of the von then model

Slash and burn

Clearing an area in a tropical force by planting and burning the vegetation

Terraces

Flat steps are created on the sides of hill to create more lane for farming

Irrigation

Artificial application for water to land for the facilitation of agriculture

Deforestation

Clearing for for us to make the land available for other uses

Draining wetlands

drainage for agricultural purposes

Pastoral nomadism

Pasture land that is used for animal grazing

Vaughn two and model

explain the location of agriculture activities by emphasizing the importance of transportation, cause associated with distance from the Market

Describes what should be grown, where in relation to the market

Illustrates the relationship between land cost, and transportation cost

Distributes various farming activities in central rings, Around a Central city

Regions of speciality farming do not always conform to center of rings

Agricultural practices and land use patterns

A rice farmer in the wet lowlands of Southeast Asia constructs flooded paddies, while a cattle rancher in the semi-arid grasslands of West Texas relies on open pasture. The contrast between these two operations demonstrates how geographic factors such as topography, precipitation, and soil quality dictate how humans modify the landscape for food production.

Tropical climate

Smallholders in the humid lowlands of Indonesia and coastal Ghana cultivate staple and export crops such as cassava, bananas, sugarcane, and oil palm in warm, frost-free conditions with year-round high temperatures and heavy annual rainfall.

Mediterranean climate

Farmers across coastal Southern California, the Central Valley, and the shores of southern Spain cultivate high-value specialty crops including olives, wine grapes, citrus fruits, and figs to take advantage of warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters.

Climate conditions

A persistent drought across the Sahel reduces sorghum yields and forces herders southward, whereas prolonged warmth and abundant seasonal rainfall in the American Corn Belt produce record maize harvests, demonstrating how weather patterns directly determine crop selection and yields.

Intensive farming practices

A strawberry operation in Ventura County, California, applies substantial financial capital, automated drip irrigation, and hundreds of hired field hands to maximize crop yield per acre on an expensive, relatively small plot of land.

Market gardening

A commercial fruit and vegetable producer in southern New Jersey heavily invests capital and seasonal labor on a small land parcel to harvest perishable tomatoes and berries for same-day delivery to grocery distributors across Philadelphia and New York City.

Plantation agriculture

A multinational corporation in the coastal lowlands of Guatemala operates a vast monocultural estate specializing in growing bananas for export to North America, relying on a large, low-wage local workforce—a structure inherited from colonial economic systems.

Mixed crop and livestock systems

A family farm in Iowa dedicates most of its acreage to growing corn and soybeans, not for direct consumer sale, but to feed on-site hogs and cattle, distributing labor demands across the seasons and generating revenue primarily from animal sales.

Extensive farming practices

A sheep-grazing enterprise in the Australian Outback covers thousands of square kilometers of arid scrubland while requiring only a few workers and minimal capital inputs per unit of land area.

Shifting cultivation

Indigenous farmers in the Amazon Basin clear a patch of rainforest vegetation, ignite the debris to deposit nutrient-rich ash into the weathered soil, cultivate cassava and maize for three years, and then abandon the plot to fallow once nutrients are depleted.

Pastoral nomadism and transhumance

Pastoral herders in the Swiss Alps move dairy cattle up to high-elevation pastures during the warm summer months and guide them back down to sheltered valley barns before winter snowfall sets in.

Rural land use patterns

The spatial arrangement of rectangular grain fields in Kansas versus concentric rings of dairy and vegetable plots outside a European metropolis, reflecting how economic demand, transportation costs, and farming methods organize countryside space.

Rural settlement patterns

Farmsteads scattered miles apart across the Great Plains to maximize acreage, compared to traditional New England farmhouses grouped tightly around a central village common, and French Canadian homesteads arranged in rows facing a river.

Long-lot survey system

Farm parcels along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec laid out as narrow ribbons running perpendicular to the shoreline, ensuring each settler household possesses direct access to water transportation, fertile river silt, and hinterland timber.

Early agricultural hearths

Geographers trace the independent origin of barley and sheep to Southwest Asia, rice and pigs to East and South Asia, and maize, beans, and squash to Mesoamerica roughly ten thousand years ago.

Fertile Crescent

The curved region spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan where humans first domesticated wild emmer wheat, barley, goats, and sheep around $8500$ BCE, establishing the foundation for sedentary agricultural civilization in Southwest Asia.

Metes and bounds survey system

A colonial land deed in eighteenth-century Virginia delineating property boundaries by referencing an old oak tree by the mill stream, proceeding fifty paces east along a stone wall, and turning north toward a prominent boulder.

Township and range survey system

An aerial view of the American Midwest revealing six-mile by six-mile square tracts further subdivided into one-square-mile sections, reflecting the federal land ordinance created to organize western settlement into a geometric grid.

First Agricultural Revolution

Around $10{,}000$ BCE, hunter-gatherer bands in the Middle East shifted from nomadic foraging to permanent sedentary farming by intentionally planting wheat seeds and penning wild sheep.

Columbian Exchange

Following transatlantic voyages in $1492$, potatoes and maize introduced from the Americas boosted European population growth, while European cattle, horses, and diseases radically altered ecosystems and societies across the Americas.

Globalization of agriculture

A supermarket shopper in Chicago purchases fresh Chilean blueberries and Peruvian asparagus in the middle of January, facilitated by containerized refrigeration, air cargo, and cross-border agribusiness contracts.

Second Agricultural Revolution

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Great Britain, the introduction of the mechanized seed drill, selective livestock breeding, and four-field crop rotation drastically increased food output, freeing surplus rural labor to staff urban manufacturing factories.

Industrial Revolution in agriculture

The widespread adoption of steam tractors, mechanical reapers, and motorized transport in nineteenth-century Europe and North America transformed agrarian economies by replacing draft animals with mechanical power and accelerating crop processing.

Green Revolution

During the $1960$s, agronomists introduced genetically bred semi-dwarf, high-yielding wheat varieties to India and Mexico, combined with synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and mechanized tube-well irrigation to avert famine.

Subsistence agriculture

A family of farmers in rural Madagascar cultivates a small plot of hill rice and sweet potatoes exclusively to feed their own household, leaving no harvest surplus to sell at regional commercial markets.

Commercial agriculture

An agribusiness firm in central Illinois plants five thousand acres of genetically modified corn designed specifically for sale to ethanol refineries and global animal feed processors.

Monoculture

A corporate farm in eastern Ukraine plants its entire twenty-thousand-acre holding exclusively with sunflower plants during a single growing season to maximize bulk harvest efficiency and international market sale.

Multi-cropping

A farmer in the humid subtropical region of Guangdong, China, harvests two separate crops of wet rice from the same paddy field within a single calendar year, followed by a fast-growing winter vegetable crop.

Monocropping

A commercial farmer in the Mississippi Delta plants continuous soybeans on the exact same field year after year without rotation, relying heavily on chemical inputs to replace depleted soil nitrogen and manage persistent weeds.

Bid-rent theory

Floriculture and vegetable greenhouses occupy prime real estate two miles outside a metropolitan core because high per-acre revenue offsets exorbitant land costs, whereas cattle ranches operate forty miles away where land is sufficiently inexpensive to sustain extensive grazing.

Slash-and-burn

Subsistence farmers in the tropical forests of Central Africa chop down dense vegetation at the end of the dry season and ignite the fallen brush, using the resulting blanket of ash as temporary fertilizer before yields decline in subsequent years.

Terrace farming

Indigenous communities in the steep Andes Mountains of Peru and the rice-growing highlands of Banaue in the Philippines carve stepped, flat platforms into mountain slopes to prevent soil erosion and collect runoff for crop cultivation.

Agricultural irrigation

Center-pivot sprinkler rigs drawing groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer to cultivate fields of corn across the arid high plains of western Kansas where annual precipitation is inadequate for rainfed farming.

Agricultural deforestation

Ranchers and soy producers in the southern fringes of the Amazon Basin burn and clear native timberland to establish open pasture for beef cattle and large tracts for export cash crops.

Draining wetlands

Engineers constructing dikes and polders in the Low Countries, and early twentieth-century developers digging canals through the Florida Everglades to convert waterlogged marshland into fertile sugar cane and vegetable farmland.

Pastoral nomadism

Bedouin camel herders in the Arabian Peninsula and Tuareg goat herders across the Sahara traverse arid grazing corridors along ancestral migratory paths, relying entirely on animal milk, meat, and wool rather than sedentary crop farming.

Von Thünen model

A concentric spatial framework explaining that dairy farms and fresh market gardens locate closest to an urban marketplace due to perishability and high transport expenses, while timber forests occupy the second ring, grain farming occupies the third ring, and extensive livestock ranching sits in the outermost ring where land values are lowest.