Chapter 5 Changes in Agricultural Technology

UNIT 5 - Origin and Diffusion of Agriculture “WHY DO WE EAT WHAT WE EAT”

THEMES & AGENDA

Agriculture has changed over time because of cultural diffusion and advances in technology.

Availability of resources and cultural practices influence agricultural practices and land-use patterns.

• Identify major centers of domestication of plants and animals.

• Explain how plants and animals diffused globally.

• Explain the connection between physical geography and agricultural practices.

Agriculture

• The deliberate modification of the Earth’s surface through cultivation of domesticated plants or rearing of domesticated animals to obtain sustenance or economic gain

• Domestication: the long term process through which humans selectively breed, protect, and care for plants and animals taken from wild populations to create genetically distinct species

Corn is the most produced crop in the USA

• Mass produced corn doesn’t look like it’s ancestor, teosinte

• Where does all of the corn go? To livestock and oil

First Agricultural Revolution

• 12,000 years ago in the fertile crescent for environmental factors (end of little ice age) and cultural factors (wanting to stay in a single place)

• Hunter gatherers deliberately experimented with sedentary farming and practiced seasonal migrations called transhumance

Hearths of Domestication

Early Hearths arose independently in South West Asia, Indus River Valley, West Africa, Central America

Zebras don’t have social hierarchy so they can;t be domesticated like lots of other animals

Columbian Exchange

• Colonization

• The interaction and widespread relocation diffusion of plants, animals, and diseases between

Soil, Topography, and Climate

• Nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are essential organic materials for topsoil health

Topography

• The surface features of the landscape like plains, jills, and mountains influences type of agriculture

  • Like terrace rice farming in vietnam on the side of the mountain

  • Rolling hills in ireland are great for grazing sheep

Climate

• Average weather patterns of an area determine which crops are suitable for a given area

  • Citrus is popular in florida

Different Farming Methods- How different economic forces influence farming

Subsistence agriculture

• Primary found in developing countries

• Usually women

• Farming and rearing animals for family not for selling it

Commercial Agriculture

• Production of food primarily for sale off the farm

Differences:

• Purpose of farming

• Percent (%) of farmers in labor force

• Use of tech

• Farm size

• Connection to other businesses

Farming commodity chain-

Logistics (shipping on trucks and ships etc), Processing (factories),

Grocery Stores, Restaurants

“Agribusiness”

Labor and Scale

Intensive - High levels of money and technology (effort)

Extensive - Little hired labor and effort, doesn’t need huge monetary investments to raise crops and animals

ONLY A FEW FARMS– OWN ALMOST EVERYTHING AT THE SUPERMARKET BECAUSE ONLY A FEW PEOPLE OWN IT

Commercial Intensive

• Market gardening

  • Small fields with a variety of crops for the local or urban market

  • Most of where our veggie 

  • Truck farming is usually for only one crop (monocropping)

  • Strawberries and tomatoes in Cali

• Mixed crop/livestock

  • Usually grains for animals

  • “Cereal grains” - wheat

  • In the corn belt (ohio - dakotas)

  • Village communities own the land together

• Grain agriculture

  • Highly mechanized farms that focus on one crop\

  • Requires irrigation systems

  • “Suitcase farms” - working migrants

• livestock fattening

  • CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation)

  • Intensive system of feeding animals using feedlots

  • Usually migrant workers again

• Dairy farming

• Plantation farming

Commercial Extensive

• Livestock ranching

Dairy Farming (commercial)

• Farming that specializes in rearing cows to produce milk

Plantation

• A large, flat, plot of land

• usually in a developing country

• devoted to production of a SINGLE tropical or subtropical crop 

• for the global marketplace

Livestock Ranching

• The ONLY EXTENSIVE COMMERCIAL farming

  • Focuses on raising cattle and sheep

  • Usually in vast expanses in arid or semiarid climates

Subsistence Intensive

• paddy rice

  • From a flooded field

  • Relying on monsoon season

Shifting Cultivation “Swidden”

• Slash and burn agriculture

• When they burn it phosphorus is restored into the ground

• Helps fertilize future plants

• They move and do it piece by piece around the land

• Leaving a field “fallow” is when you leave a field bare to regenerate

REASONS WHY SHIFTING CULTIVATION IS DIMINISHING:

Increased CO2 emissions from burning and deforestation

loss of native habitat for flora and fauna

Urbanization takes up space that could be used for farming

Pastoral Nomadism

• A herd that moves around

• Milk, skins, woll, leather etc

• Covers roughly 20% of world’s land area

Rural Settlements (explains how people organize themselves on the land)

• Linear settlements

  • arranged in a line

• Clustered settlements

  • tightly bunched farms

  • usually tiny towns with small populations

• Dispersed settlements

  • Even more rural/isolated

  • Just a handful of farms

Survey Patterns

• Helps determine property ownership and other land boundaries

Metes and Bounds system

• Uses landscape (trees, rivers, large rocks) to indicate where the properties are divided

• Leads to random boundaries and shapes

Long lots

• Came from french colonial system

• Linear settlements along a road or river

Township and range

• Rectangular land divisions

• Designed to disperse settlers across farmlands in the US interior

Spatial Perspective:

• A way of looking at the world to make sense of how we use space

In agriculture, spatial perspective can explain why some farms are more likely to agglomerate (group together), when a central city and more are farther away

Whether a farm is intensive or extensive will influence where it is located

BID RENT Theory (a kind of spatial perspective)

• How much would you be willing to pay for land

• “the demand for and increase of land increases as you get closer to the central business district (city)”

• “Where would you want to locate your farm and why?”

Intensive agriculture like dairy and market gardening needs to be closer to CBD so it doesn’t expire

Extensive agriculture like potatoes and grains require large areas and lower land costs offset the machine and transportation costs

5.4 : Changes in Agricultural Technology

“Agriculture has changed over time because of cultural diffusion and advances in technology”

The Second Agricultural Revolution:

• 1800s

• New tech and increased food production

• Better diets, longer lives, more jobs in factories (overall better health)

• New tools like tractors and railroads

• Chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers

• All increased crop yields

• Decreased human jobs since machines do more work

Agrichemicals

• Synthetic fertilizers

  • Fossil fuel byproducts

  • Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for plants

• Pesticides kill pests, herbicides kill weeds

• Part of revolution

Linked with stage 2 of demographic transition model

Green Revolution (40s and 50s)

• Faster growing crops with more product

• Growing technology again (more machines and chemicals)

• Brought in to developing world combating famine

• Saved lives but created problems like debt for farmers to buy new tech and salt going into the soil (salinity)

Global Supply Chain

• Most locally produced crops and food products are distributed and consumed globally

• Increasing interdependence (increased room for error)

  • Climate affecting crops

  • Cost of steel rising

  • Bird flu

  • Higher land prices = more expensive food

  • High demand

Globalized Diets

• Globalization

• Relocation diffusion

• As countries develop– they consume more expensive products (meat)

• Places with less arable land or greater populations need imported food

Export commodities

• Cash crop

• Cocoa in ghana

• Cotton in mozambique

• Tea in sri lanka

• Coffee in latin america

• They need to export commodities to survive

In sri lanka, they used people from tamil india– mostly women– to be slaves on their tea plantations for a long time after coffee didn’t work

After slaves were outlawed, they still didn’t pay them and denied their citizenship (calling them “temporary immigrants”)

Now they work all day for around 5 dollars (depending on if they pick more than 40 pounds of tea leaves)

There was a movement to increase their wages, but it barely worked and their wages were raised 10 cents

The lady they interviewed says she doesn't like the hard work, but after being the 7th generation of tea workers– she is the last in her family to do it

 Urban landscape can be changed globally by products like coffee

Consolidation of small family farms or businesses to create larger more mainstream businesses like starbucks

Global food distribution

• Affected by political relationships (tariffs), infrastructure (or natural problems), and patterns of world trade

• Global politics is the primary cause of hunger in the world (distribution isn’t equal)

Global trade favors developed countries

• They have enough money to invest in their economies

Subsite: money that the government gives people to do something

The us cut down a lot of trees that haiti used for self-sustenance, and the US dumped their rice and subsidized it to make it cheaper

Haitians don’t need the “aid” for food from the US

The rice coming in made haitian rice farmers lose their jobs since there was no need for it

Infrastructure built by colonizers is good for transporting trade goods, but it can cause famine because smaller places don’t have access to the goods

Challenges + Opportunities in Agriculture

Biotechnology: GMOs and GE

GMO: Genetically modified organisms

GE: Genetically Engineered

They have been genetically altered, not crossbred

• Makes it grow faster, withstand harsh weather conditions, and stay alive after being sprayed with chemicals like pesticides 

It’s sometimes argued that they are safe

• Reduces poverty for small farmers in developing countries

Arguments that they aren’t safe

• Can alter local ecosystems

Opportunities 

• Higher crop yields

• Pest and disease control

Challenges

• Reduction in biodiversity

• May get into the runoff

• Farmers may become dependent on these businesses

AQUACULTURE “Blue revolution?”:

• Cultivation and harvesting of seafood, shellish, and seaweed under controlled and farmed conditions

Global aquaculture produces more pounds of seafood than commercial production of beef

Fish require significantly less resources than livestock

Some argue that it reduces biodiversity, and can lead to wastewater issues (from algae and poop haha)

Food Deserts and Food Oasis

• Food deserts will have lots of people in low income areas

• Low access to healthy affordable food (don’t have a grocery store closeby)

• Food insecurity can be a large problem

LOCAVORE

• Urban farming

• Community supported agriculture 

  • Consumers pay an upfront fee to farmers to receive fresh goods

• Supports local farmers

• Alleviates food deserts

• Reduces transportation CO2

Organic 

• No pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, sewage sludge, or gmos

• Animals are not given antibiotics or hormones

• They make less money but are becoming more popular

Value added specialty crops

• A value added specialty crop has been changed in some way

• Different than the bigger companies do it

• Makes smaller farms be able to compete with bigger farms

FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS 

• Provide greater equity to workers in small businesses in developing countries

• Ensures a minimum wage and environmental standards

Women in subsistence agriculture

• Their role as fruit and vegetable collector likely led to the domestication of many crops

• Cultural barriers can prevent women from having larger or different jobs

Women in commercial agriculture

• Significantly less women are in farming than men

What is von Thünen's model? Explain its applications and limitations.

• Explains rural land use by emphasizing the importance of land and labor costs (plus transportation costs) associated with distance from the market

• Land and labor costs go down as we move away from city

• Similar soil and site factors (isotropy)

• Social customs and government policy uniformly support all agriculture types
  Green Revolution (40s and 50s)

  • Faster growing crops with more product

  • Growing technology again (more machines and chemicals)

  • Brought in to developing world combating famine

  • Saved lives but created problems like debt for farmers to buy new tech and salt going into the soil (salinity)

  
  

  Global Supply Chain

  • Most locally produced crops and food products are distributed and consumed globally

  • Increasing interdependence (increased room for error)

    • Climate affecting crops

    • Cost of steel rising

    • Bird flu

    • Higher land prices = more expensive food

    • High demand

  
  

  Globalized Diets

  • Globalization

  • Relocation diffusion

  • As countries develop– they consume more expensive products (meat)

  • Places with less arable land or greater populations need imported food

  Export commodities

  • Cash crop

  • Cocoa in ghana

  • Cotton in mozambique

  • Tea in sri lanka

  • Coffee in latin america

  • They need to export commodities to survive

  In sri lanka, they used people from tamil india– mostly women– to be slaves on their tea plantations for a long time after coffee didn’t work

  After slaves were outlawed, they still didn’t pay them and denied their citizenship (calling them “temporary immigrants”)

  Now they work all day for around 5 dollars (depending on if they pick more than 40 pounds of tea leaves)

  There was a movement to increase their wages, but it barely worked and their wages were raised 10 cents

  The lady they interviewed says she doesn't like the hard work, but after being the 7th generation of tea workers– she is the last in her family to do it

  
  

   Urban landscape can be changed globally by products like coffee

  Consolidation of small family farms or businesses to create larger more mainstream businesses like starbucks

  Global food distribution

  • Affected by political relationships (tariffs), infrastructure (or natural problems), and patterns of world trade

  • Global politics is the primary cause of hunger in the world (distribution isn’t equal)

  Global trade favors developed countries

  • They have enough money to invest in their economies

  Subsite: money that the government gives people to do something

  
  

  The us cut down a lot of trees that haiti used for self-sustenance, and the US dumped their rice and subsidized it to make it cheaper

  Haitians don’t need the “aid” for food from the US

  The rice coming in made haitian rice farmers lose their jobs since there was no need for it

  Infrastructure built by colonizers is good for transporting trade goods, but it can cause famine because smaller places don’t have access to the goods

  
  

  Challenges + Opportunities in Agriculture

  Biotechnology: GMOs and GE

  GMO: Genetically modified organisms

  GE: Genetically Engineered

  They have been genetically altered, not crossbred

  • Makes it grow faster, withstand harsh weather conditions, and stay alive after being sprayed with chemicals like pesticides 

  It’s sometimes argued that they are safe

  • Reduces poverty for small farmers in developing countries

  Arguments that they aren’t safe

  • Can alter local ecosystems

  Opportunities 

  • Higher crop yields

  • Pest and disease control

  Challenges

  • Reduction in biodiversity

  • May get into the runoff

  • Farmers may become dependent on these businesses

  
  

  AQUACULTURE “Blue revolution?”:

  • Cultivation and harvesting of seafood, shellish, and seaweed under controlled and farmed conditions

  Global aquaculture produces more pounds of seafood than commercial production of beef

  Fish require significantly less resources than livestock

  Some argue that it reduces biodiversity, and can lead to wastewater issues (from algae and poop haha)

  
  

  Food Deserts and Food Oasis

  • Food deserts will have lots of people in low income areas

  • Low access to healthy affordable food (don’t have a grocery store closeby)

  • Food insecurity can be a large problem

  LOCAVORE

  • Urban farming

  • Community supported agriculture 

    • Consumers pay an upfront fee to farmers to receive fresh goods

  • Supports local farmers

  • Alleviates food deserts

  • Reduces transportation CO2

  Organic 

  • No pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, sewage sludge, or gmos

  • Animals are not given antibiotics or hormones

  • They make less money but are becoming more popular

  Value added specialty crops

  • A value added specialty crop has been changed in some way

  • Different than the bigger companies do it

  • Makes smaller farms be able to compete with bigger farms

  FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS 

  • Provide greater equity to workers in small businesses in developing countries

  • Ensures a minimum wage and environmental standards

  
  

  Women in subsistence agriculture

  • Their role as fruit and vegetable collector likely led to the domestication of many crops

  • Cultural barriers can prevent women from having larger or different jobs

  Women in commercial agriculture

  • Significantly less women are in farming than men

  
  

  • The Von Thunen model is an economic model developed in the 19th century that aims to explain the spatial organization of agriculture and how it is influenced by transportation costs.

  • According to the Von Thunen model, the spatial organization of agriculture is influenced by the distance of the farm from the market and the cost of transportation.

  • The Von Thunen model divides agricultural land into four zones based on distance from the market and the cost of transportation. The first (inner) zone is the most profitable because it is closest to the market and has the lowest transportation costs. The fourth (outer) zone is the least profitable because it is farthest from the market and has the highest transportation costs.

  • The Von Thunen model is based on a number of assumptions, including that the cost of transportation is a linear function of distance, the market is located in the center of a circular agricultural region, there is no transportation between different zones, there are no externalities, land is used solely for agricultural production, and there is a single dominant agricultural activity.

  • The Von Thunen model is a simplified model and does not take into account many real-world factors that can influence the spatial organization of agriculture. However, it remains an important conceptual model in economics and is often used to study the spatial organization of agriculture and other economic activities.

  The Second Agricultural Revolution • Resulted in fewer, larger, and much more productive farms. Caused a decrease in the number of farm owners and an even greater drop-off in the need for agricultural laborers. Led to more people living in urban areas than rural areas for the first time in United States history.