AP Human Geography - Agriculture: Origins, Types, and Challenges
Crop Origins and Agriculture's Foundation
Origin Hearths: Focus on understanding the general idea of where crops originated rather than memorizing every detail.
Site vs. Situation:
Site: Absolute location and indigenous factors.
Situation: Relative location and connections between places.
Intensive vs. Extensive Farming
Intensive Farming: Uses less land, more capital (money, machinery), and often more labor; located closer to population centers due to perishable products and transportation costs savings.
Extensive Farming: Uses more land, less labor, and less capital; located farther from markets.
Types of Intensive Farming
Plantation Agriculture: Typically in less economically developed countries (periphery/semi-periphery), producing for core countries; relies on cheaper labor.
Mixed Crop and Livestock: Offers dispersed work and income throughout the year for farmers.
Market Gardening (Truck Farming): Takes advantage of preservatives and varied growing seasons, often located in the southeastern United States due to favorable climate.
Cash Crops and Land Use
Cash Crops: Grown for sale, not for consumption by the farmer.
Can exacerbate food shortages in less economically developed areas by diverting arable land.
Arable Land: Farmable, fertile land suitable for cultivation.
Types of Extensive Farming
Shifting Cultivation: May involve slash and burn techniques to enrich the soil nutrients temporarily.
Slash and Burn Agriculture: Cutting down and burning vegetation to put nutrients back into the soil.
Nomadic Herding: Pastoral nomadism where people move with their livestock, within a defined territory, to find food and water sources.
Practiced where sedentary agriculture is impossible.
Ranching: Often found in more economically developed areas, located far from markets to save on land costs.
Transhumance: Seasonal migration between highlands and lowlands, specifically tied to seasonal changes unlike general nomadic herding.
Land Fallowing and Agricultural Yield
Land Fallowing: Intentionally leaving land uncultivated to restore soil nutrients and fertility.
Yield: The amount of agricultural production in a specific area.
Settlement Patterns
Clustered: Buildings packed closely together.
Dispersed: Buildings spread out over a wide area.
Linear: Buildings arranged in a line, often along a road, river, or railroad.
Survey Methods
Long Lots: Narrow parcels of land, often connected to a waterway; common in areas colonized by the French (e.g., Louisiana, Quebec).
Meets and Bounds: Uses landmarks to define boundaries; common in England and the original 13 colonies.
Township and Range: Grid-like patterns using longitude and latitude; used in the United States, making land easy to sell and organize.
Agricultural Revolutions
First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution): Transition from nomadic to sedentary life; accidental discovery of cultivation; led to food surpluses and the development of social hierarchies.
Columbian Exchange: Diffusion of crops, livestock, and diseases between the New World and Old World.
Examples: Potato from the New World to Europe led to population boom in England.
Second Agricultural Revolution: Coincided with the Industrial Revolution; innovations like the seed drill and threshing machines; increase in mechanized farming.
Enclosure Movement: Communal land converted to private landownership, increasing production but displacing farmers and leading to rural-to-urban migration.
The Malthusian Theory
Malthus: Believed population grew exponentially while food production increased arithmetically, leading to a potential Malthusian catastrophe.
Agricultural revolutions disproved this theory by significantly increasing food production.
The Green Revolution
Big Increase: Increase in agricultural production due to high-yield crop varieties, hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and modern irrigation.
Norman Borlaug: Credited with saving millions of lives through semi-dwarf wheat varieties.
Consequences of the Green Revolution
Environmental Degradation: Increased use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Water Depletion: Over-extraction of water for irrigation.
Loss of Agricultural Biodiversity: Increased monocropping.
Economic Dependence: Periphery and semi-periphery countries becoming dependent on core countries for resources and capital.
Agribusiness and Monocropping
Agribusinesses: Larger businesses due to Green Revolution down the road.
Monocropping: Cultivating a single crop year after year for profit, reducing biodiversity and depleting soil nutrients.
Subsistence vs. Commercial Agriculture
Subsistence Agriculture: Producing food for oneself, family, or local community.
Commercial Agriculture: Producing food for sale and profit.
Key Concepts in Large-Scale Commercial Agriculture
Large Scale Commercial Agriculture: Uses advanced technology (geospatial technology, GPS, satellite imagery) for larger productions.
Commodity Chains: The path a commodity takes from raw form to consumer. The entire process.
Linkages: Connections, industry/sector communication, break of bulk points.
Carrying Capacity: Maximum number of organisms that can be supported in an area sustainably.
Economies of Scale: Cost advantages due to increased production levels, reducing individual costs.
Agribusiness: Large business in food production.
GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms): Intentionally manipulated, genetically engineered food.
Key Geographic Models
Bid-Rent Theory: Land value decreases as distance from the city increases.
Von Thunen Model: Explains agricultural land use based on transportation costs and perishability.
Globalization and Agriculture
Supply Chains: Network of people involved in a product.
Interdependence: Global connectedness.
Commodity Dependence: Countries relying heavily on commodity exports.
Net Importer/Exporter: Balance of trade in food products.
Global Challenges: The Ukraine/Russia Example
The Ukraine-Russia Conflict: Disrupts global food distribution, impacts fertilizer prices.
Nitrogen and Phosphate: Used for fertilizers, and Russia attacks them.
Consequences of Global Agricultural Practices
Deforestation: Clearing forests, can be due to agricultural practices.
Pastoral Nomadism: Herders and livestock migration. Certain limited area that they migrate within.
Irrigation: Removal of water from an area to another. Can lead to salinization, and soil erosion.
Soil Erosion: Displacement of upper soil layer.
Terrace Farming: Building slopes to channel water in farming.
Draining Wetlands: Loss of natural filtration systems.
Soil Salinization: Accumulation of salt in the soil caused by over irrigation.
Aquaculture: Rearing of animals.
Economic Development Impacts
Access to money: Determines if you can make luxury product purchases. Also affects what types of food we are producing or able to purchase.
Challenges of food production, Modernly
Climate change: reduction in biodiversity, reduction in water supply.
Modern Day/Contemporary Challenges: Sustainability and sustainability.
Food Deserts and Community Solutions
Food Deserts: Lack of access to fresh and healthy food which causes Diabetes, and bad health.
Community Supported Agriculture: Consumers support farmers directly.
Organic Farming: Natural farming, no antibiotics or fertilization usages to sustain production efforts.
Fair Trade: Revenue is going to the less developed countries being the producers.
Value-Added Crops: product to production increases costs. The product is worth more than the crop.
Government Subsidies: Incentivizing or money given to the industry and company.
Women in Agriculture and Economic Equity
Shifts in economic development.: As it happens, women can get other opportunities to be hired and grow and prosper.