Agriculture and Rural Land-Use: Patterns and Processes

1st Agricultural Revolution

  • Neolithic Revolution
  • Domestication of plants and animals
  • Diffusion of agriculture
  • Crop hearths:
    • SW Asia: Barley, wheat, lentil, and olive
    • E Asia: Rice and Millet
  • Columbian Exchange: global exchange of goods, diseases, plants, animals
    • Crops help with population growth
    • Migration
    • Transfer of European Diseases
    • Native American’s population wiped out

2nd Agricultural Revolution:

  • Allows the industrial revolution to begin and grow rapidly
  • Technology brings a surplus of production with less human labor

Subsistence vs. Commercial agriculture

  • Subsistence: production of food for the farmer’s family
  • Commercial: production of food for a global scale
  • Undernourishment: dietary energy consumption is lower than the requirement

Subsistence Farming types

  • Pastoral Nomadism
    • Herding of domesticated animals
    • Arid and semi-arid areas of N. Africa, Middle East, Central Asia
    • Transhumance: Migrations from highlands to lowlands by seasonal
  • Shifting Cultivation
    • Clear land for planting by cutting and burning the vegetation
    • Grow crops for a few years until soil nutrients are gone
    • Tropical rainforests, Amazon and Central and West Africa
  • Intensive Subsistence Agriculture
    • Labor intensive production of rice
    • Major food source is Asia
    • Double cropping is used in warm areas of South China and Taiwan

Commercial Agriculture

  • Agribusiness
    • Industrialization of agriculture
    • Chemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides
    • Large food production industry
  • Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming
    • Mixture of crops and livestock
    • Most of crops are fed to animals
    • Share the workload more evenly through the year
  • Dairy Farming
    • Most important type in the first ring outside the large cities
    • Milkshed: ring surrounding a city from which milk can be provided
  • Commercial Gardening and Fruits
    • Truck farming/ bartering
  • Grain Farming
    • Crops are grown for humans
  • Mediterannean Agriculture
    • Borders a sea & on west coasts of continents
    • Horticulture: Growing of fruits, vegetables, and flower form the commercial base
  • Live-Stock Agriculture
    • Ranching: Commercial grazing of livestock
    • Developed countries where soil is not fertile

Problems

  • Subsistence Farmers must feed an increasing amount of people
  • Commercial Farmers have low income
  • Von Thunen Model
    • Explaining the importance of the distances to market
    • 1rst ring: Perishable Foods (milk, etc.)
    • 2nd Ring: Difficult to transport (wood, etc.)
    • 3rd Ring: Various crops and pasture lands
    • 4th Ring: Spacious lands for animal grazing

Strategies to distribute food

  • Increasing Exports
  • Making the land area used for agriculture larger
  • Expanding fishing
    • aquafarming/aquaculture: cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions
  • Increase the productivity of land used for agriculture
    • Higher-yield seeds
    • Increase use of fertilizers

3rd Agricultural Revolution

  • Green Revolution
    • Development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, irrigation expansion
  • Gene revolution
    • Hormones and antibiotics are provided to animals
    • Genetically modified livestock

Sustainable Agriculture

  • Practices that keep and enhance environmental quality
  • Sensitive land management
  • Limited Use of Chemicals
  • Better combination of crops and livestock