Chapter 13: Patterns and Practices of Agricultural Production © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company 13.1 Agricultural Production Regions •

Chapter 13: Patterns and
Practices of Agricultural
Production

© National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company
13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Economic forces that influence agriculture include:
• cost of materials, land, and labor
• availability of capital
• impacts of government policies
• consumer preferences and market demands

© National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company
13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Most subsistence agriculture occurs in rural Africa and parts of Asia and Latin
America.
• Connections to global market are limited and farmers have less access to credit and
financial capital.
• Many subsistence farmers live in poverty.
• Labor costs are low relative to the cost of machinery.

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13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Most commercial agriculture takes place in core and semi-peripheral
countries.
• Commercial farming occurs in places with existing infrastructure to access and supply
the global market.
• Characteristics include modern farm equipment, advanced technologies, and large plots
of land.
• Commercial farmers maximize income by purchasing a high level of external inputs.
• Commercial farming requires access to capital.

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13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• A dual agricultural economy refers to two agricultural sectors in the same
country or region.
• Subsistence farms grow food for farmers.
• Commercial operations cultivate a crop to sell, often for export.
• Agribusiness refers to the large-scale system that includes the production,
processing, and distribution of agricultural products and equipment.
• Commercial farmers are just one part of the agribusiness system.

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13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Higher yields result from the following:
• advanced farm machinery and modern equipment that increases efficiency
• technology that lengthens or changes growing season
• advances in irrigation
• improved fertilizers and pesticides
• hybrid grains, fruits, and vegetables—varieties of plants bred to enhance desired
characteristics and improve disease resistance
• the amount of capital that farmers have to invest in materials, inputs, and technology

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13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Government policies greatly impact agricultural practices.
• payments to farmers for growing certain crops or for not growing others
• regulations on agricultural imports and exports
• price supports in the form of crop purchases made by the government at a guaranteed
price
• quotas to control the supply of certain crops

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13.1 Agricultural Production Regions
• Economic Forces and Agriculture
• Consumer preferences affect agricultural production.
• Dietary preferences change over time and seasonally.
• Farmers produce more of the products in higher demand.
• For example, farmers in Mexico use methods to increase yields in time to meet the booming
demand for avocados in the United States prior to the Super Bowl.

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Family vs. Corporate Control
• Family farms represent the vast majority of farms.
• 84% of farms worldwide are less than 5 acres.
• Family farms account for less of the world’s total farmland.
• 12% of the total farmland is owned by family farms.
• The vast majority of farmland controlled by larger farms is in core countries.
• In the United States
• the number of farms has decreased since the 1960s
• the number of farms has held steady in recent decades, at just over 2 million
• more than 90% of farms are classified as small; most of these are family-owned and
operated

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Family vs. Corporate Control
• U.S agricultural production in 2007 and 2017:

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Family vs. Corporate Control
• Recent trends are hurting family farms and causing a shift in the spatial
organization of agriculture.
• Overall population is shifting from rural to urban areas.
• Young people view farming as hard work for small profit.
• Farmers are dying without successors in place.
• Costs are rising.
• At times, a supply-heavy market causes prices to fall.

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Family vs. Corporate Control
• Vertical integration occurs when a company controls more than one stage of
the production process.
• Vertical integration is difficult for small, family-owned farms.

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Commodity Chains
• Commodity chain: a complex network that connects places of production
with distribution to consumers

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Pricing and Policies
• When supply is high, prices go down.
• Prices can drop so low that production costs are higher than the value of
the product, putting farmers out of business.
• The U.S. government protects farmers with low-cost loans, insurance,
and farm subsidies, or direct payments.
• U.S. farm subsidies currently amount to about $20 billion annually year.
• Subsidies tend to benefit the highest-quantity producers of commodities more
than small farmers.

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13.2 The Spatial Organization of Agriculture
• Pricing and Policies
• A tariff is a tax or duty on a particular import or export.
• Tariffs raise the price of imported goods, making them more expensive to
purchase than goods made within the country and giving domestic producers an
advantage.
• Tariffs can lead to trade wars, which can disrupt established commodity chains,
lower the price of farm products, and cause farmers to lose business.

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13.3 The Von Thünen Model
• Rural Land Use Patterns
• Von Thünen model: The perishability of the product and transportation costs
to the market factor into a farmer’s decisions regarding agricultural practices.

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13.3 The Von Thünen Model
• Applying Von Thünen Today
• Most of the assumptions do not apply to today’s world.
• Many cities have multiple centers of business.
• There is no isolated state without external influences.
• Industrialization, technology, and government policies have dramatically altered agricultural systems.

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13.3 The Von Thünen Model
• Applying Von Thünen Today
• Von Thünen’s model can still be loosely applied to contemporary
agriculture, especially concerning the role of transportation in patterns
of production.
• Refrigerated containers can be transported on trucks, trains, ships, and cargo
planes.
• Refrigeration has permitted eggs, dairy, and other perishable items to be
produced far from markets.
• Time-space compression due to efficient transportation has expanded markets
available to most producers.

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Agricultural Interdependence
• No one country produces all the food that its population consumes.
• Global supply chains are the same as commodity chains but on a global scale.
• They enable products to be delivered from one country to another.
• Increased interdependence of agricultural production and consumption have resulted as
global supply chains have become more complex.
• Global agricultural commodities include wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, coffee, tea,
cacao, and vanilla.

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Agricultural Interdependence
• Supply chain of global commodity products:
• Production may start in a peripheral country where low-cost labor is available to grow
and harvest crops, or it may start with a commercial producer in the United States or
other core country (corn, wheat).
• Processing and packaging may be in same country as the grower or in another country.
• The commodity is distributed to markets usually in core locations of the world.

© National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company
13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Agricultural Interdependence
• Global supply chains are the same as commodity chains but on a global scale.
• Commodity products such as wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, coffee, and tea are traded
through global supply chains.
• Commodity dependency: Some peripheral countries are dependent on a
single cash crop.
• A cash crop is a crop produced for its commercial value.
• Reliance on a single commodity is risky and unhealthy for an economy.
• An economy that relies on one export can be negatively affected by:
• a drop in demand for the export
• an increase in supply
• crop failure resulting from storms, droughts, or extreme temperatures
• trade wars

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Infrastructure
• Sufficient infrastructure is necessary to participate in the global agricultural
system.
• Infrastructure consists of networks and facilities such as:
• communication systems
• sewage, water, and electric systems
• roads and transportation systems

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Political Relationships
• Global supply chains are affected by political instability and trade wars.
• Global supply chains trace their roots back to European colonial and imperial
networks.
• Monocropping is one result of European imperialism.
• Some former colonies are still tied economically to their former colonizers

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Patterns of World Trade
• The amount of agricultural trade is
growing and changing every year.

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Patterns of World Trade
• Core countries are the leading agricultural exporters and importers.
• Emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Russia are
becoming increasingly relevant.
• The share of imports by peripheral and semi-peripheral countries from other
peripheral and semi-peripheral countries is growing, primarily due to
population growth.

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13.4 Agriculture as a Global System
• Patterns of World Trade
• Food preferences alter patterns of production and consumption.
• Increasing interest in plant-based foods is creating new demand for the production of
vegetable proteins.
• The fair trade movement is a global campaign to fix unfair wage practices and
protect the ability of farmers to earn a living.
• Fair trade products are available everywhere but in limited quantities.
• Consumers may choose to buy fair trade products, which are priced higher, in order to
support the movement’s goals.

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Chapter 13 Key Vocabulary
• agribusiness
• cash crop
• commodity chain
• dual agricultural
economy
• fair trade
• farm subsidy
• global supply chain
• hybrid
• infrastructure
• tariff
• vertical integration
• von Thünen model