Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes Notes

5.1: Introduction to Agriculture

• Agricultural practices are influenced by the physical environment and climatic conditions.
• Physical Environment:
  • Landforms: Valleys are best for agriculture; mountains limit it.
  • Water access is crucial.
  • Soil composition affects crop suitability.
• Climate:
  • Influenced by latitude, determining seasons, sunlight, precipitation, and soil composition.
• Climate Zones:
  • Tropical (Low latitude): High precipitation and sun exposure; rainforests.
  • Temperate (Mid-Latitude): Four seasons; moderate climate; best farmland.
  • Arctic (High Latitude): Cold most of the year.
• Plant and animal production are directly linked to climate.
  • Soil type, climate, and precipitation govern what types of crops/animals are raised.
  • Exceptions: High latitudes (poles) too cold; high altitudes (mountains).
• Mediterranean Agriculture: Hot-dry summers, mild winters, narrow valleys, irrigation systems.
  • Practiced in S. Europe, N. & S. Africa, SW Asia, SW Australia, Cali, Chile.
  • Crops: Figs, dates, olives, and grapes.
  • Rugged Terrain: Goats and sheep.

Intensive Farming Practices

• Determined by land usage: plentiful/cheap = extensive; scarce/expensive = intensive.
• Extensive Land Use: Fewer inputs relative to space.
  • Shifting cultivation, nomadic herding, and ranching.
• Intensive Land Use: Greater inputs relative to space.
  • Rice farming in S. SE. E Asia: Labor intensive but little machinery.
  • Market gardening: migrant workers, low wages. Plantations.
• Market/Commercial Gardening: Fruit/veggie farming.
  • AKA “Truck Farming”.
  • California and southeast: long growing seasons (lettuce, broccoli, apples, oranges, tomatoes).
• Plantation Agriculture: Legacy of colonialism in low Latitude LDCs (Tropics).
  • Specializes in one crop (coffee, cocoa, rubber, sugarcane, bananas, tobacco, tea, coconuts, cotton).
  • Labor intensive; exploits cheap labor; processing occurs on or near plantation.
• Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming: Integrated system.
  • Midwestern US, northern Europe, Canada; diffused to developing world.
  • Crops raised to feed livestock; livestock used for meat/dairy; manure fertilizes crops.
• Dairy Farming: Dairy products for customers in a geographic area.
  • Commercial Dairy farms in MDCs.
  • Milk shed: Geographic distance that milk is delivered before it spoils; increases with technology.
    • Refrigeration and Transportation.

Extensive Agriculture

• Shifting Cultivation: (Slash and Burn/Swidden) Subsistence farming in tropical regions.
  • Farmers move from field to field burning adds nitrogen to soil.
  • Clear land, plant, harvest until soil loses fertility, then move.
  • SE Asia-Rice, S. Am. Corn, Millet and Sorghum in Sub.Saharan.
• Pastoral Nomadism (Nomadic Herding): Arid and semiarid climates; nomadic.
  • Cattle, camels reindeer, goats, yaks, sheep and horses.
  • Meat, milk, hides are big products
  • Usually practice transhumance: seasonal migration of herds (low-lying regions in winter, higher altitudes in summer).
  • Animals raised are based on region (Desert - camels, Central asia and Africa - Cattle, Siberia - Reindeer).
• Livestock Ranching: Commercial (for profit) grazing; animals confined to a specific area.
  • Areas too dry for growing crops in large quantities.
  • Western USA, Pampas in Argentina, Southern Brazil, Uruguay; parts of Spain and Portugal, China, Central Australia.
• Grain Farming: Regions too dry for mixed crop agriculture.
  • Wheat.
  • Prairies and plains.
  • Spring Wheat: Planted in early spring, harvested in autumn (Dakotas, Montana, Canada).
  • Winter Wheat: Planted in fall, harvested in early summer (Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado).
  • Top producers of wheat are China, India, Russia and USA.
• Beef Industry: Cattle raising is extensive but becomes intensive once the cow matures, then transported to feedlots.
  • Fed corn and minimal movement due to space fattens cattle. Fast food production has increased global need for meat and feedlots maximizes profit.

5.2: Settlement Patterns and Survey Methods

• Specific agricultural practices shape different rural land-use patterns.
• Rural settlement patterns are classified as clustered, dispersed, or linear
  • Clustered (Nucleated) Settlements: Groups of homes located near each other in a hamlet or village.
    • Gives sense of community, farms extend outwards in wedge shapes.
  • Linear Settlements: Groups of homes located near each other along a transportation route for trade purposes.
  • Dispersed Settlements: Farmers lived in homes spread throughout the countryside.
    • US and Canada promoted westward expansion by giving land to people if people agreed to reside on it for a number of years
• Rural survey methods include metes and bounds, township and range, and long lot.
  • Metes and Bounds: Irregular shapes.
    • "From the Oak Tree, 100 yards north , to the corner of the barn."
  • French Long Lots: Farms were long thin section of land that ran perpendicular to a river.
    • Access to river for trading purposes
    • Quebec and Louisiana.
  • Township and Range Based on surveying, not physical features. 6 x 6 square or rectangular mile sections (each has 640 acres).

5.3: Agricultural Origins and Diffusions

• Early hearths of domestication of plants and animals arose in the fertile crescent and several other regions of the world, including the Indus River Valley, Southeast Asia, and Central America.
• 1st Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution): Transitioning from hunter/gatherers to farmers.
• Agricultural Hearths: Established independently at different times; first hearths were probably at the edge of forests.
  • Fertile Crescent, Indus River Valley, Southeast Asia and Central America.
• Animal domestication: Raising and caring for animals for protection or food; started in Central Asia with dogs.
• Plant domestication: Growing of crops that people planted, raised and harvested.
  • Sauer believed first was vegetative - growing crops using parts of the stems or roots.
  • Later they planted with seeds.
• Patterns of diffusion, such as the Columbian Exchange and the agricultural revolutions, resulted in the global spread of various plants and animals.
• Job Specialization first hearths>population centers>first urban areas and those grew into the first civilizations.
  • Brought increased trade (major trading routes were the empire trade routes (rome, persia, etc.) and Silk Road).
• Columbian Exchange: Global movement of plants and animals between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas connected previously biologically isolated ecosystems.

5.4: The Second Agricultural Revolution

• New technology and increased food production in the second agricultural revolution led to better diets, longer life expectancies, and more people available for work in factories.
• 2nd Agricultural Revolution: Accompanied the IR, dramatically increased food production.
  • Mechanization of agricultural production (new inventions).
  • Transportation advances and large scale irrigation.
• Technology Effects: Led to better diets and longer life spans due to higher agricultural production (more food).
  • Population increase meant larger work pool to work in IR factories.
  • This led to urbanization due to jobs.
• Land Use: Enclosure Acts (laws in Britain to purchase/enclose land for their own use - first commercialization).
  • Farms became larger, production more efficient (new machines), producers raised crops to sell for profit rather than simply for consumption.
  • New technologies made this possible (iron/steel plough, mechanized seed drilling, reaper/harvester, grain elevator, barbed wire, mixed nitrogen and nitric acid fertilizer).
• Urbanization: Less farms that were more productive
  • Forced people off land, created worker pool for factories in urban areas.

5.5: The Green Revolution

• The Green Revolution was characterized in agriculture by the use of high-yield seeds, increased use of chemicals and mechanized farming.

• Advances in plant biology developed higher-yielding, disease resistant and faster growing varieties of grain (rice, wheat and maize (corn)).

• Allowed for double cropping (growing more than one crop in a year) and increased use of fertilizers and pesticides and efficient farming machinery.

• Seed Hybrids: Process of breeding two plants for desirable traits for grains, especially rice.

  • chief architect was Norman Borlaug who developed a wheat hybrid that turned Mexico from a wheat importing to a self sufficient country.

• Positive Effects: Food production dramatically increased leading to less hunger, lower death rates and growing population in LDCs.

• Higher yields meant more food was produced in same amount of land with a growing population.

• Reduced the threat of famine in LDCs in 1960s achieved mostly in Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.

• The higher yields is believed to have prevented a devastating famine in LDCs in the 1960s.
  Global yield increases from 1960 to 2000: Wheat: 208% Corn: 157% Rice: 109% Potatoes: 78% Financially benefited universities and corporations in MDCs and Food prices dropped because of the increased supply

• Negative Effects: Environmental Damage, double cropping and the pesticides puts strain on the land causing Water loss of natural water and nutrients.

• Fertilizer runoff has created pollution in streams, rivers and lakes leads to polluted drinking water, species extinction, health issues and pollution.
  *As production increased, so did the cost of production for Machinery, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides became too expensive for poorest farmers mostly LDC farmers.

  5.6: Agricultural Productions Regions

• 2 main types of agriculture are Subsistence and Commercial

  • Subsistence farming Small scale farms that produce enough food for personal consumption LDCs

  • Commercial Farming Large scale farms that produce for profit, MDC’s, maximizes output = Profit.

    • Monoculture/Monocropping Producing a single cash crop in large plot of land.

  • Besides climate, economic development determines agriculture for what people need or willing to buy. what type of herding depends on development.

    *Pastoral nomadism is a form of subsistence Travel from place to place with animals in LDC activity.,/ Ranching Commercial agriculture.
    *Technology can overcome the climate. In cold climates, you can still grow warm crops in greenhouses, Climate in SW Asia is great for raising hogs but Muslims and Jews reject eating or raising hogs.

5.7: Spatial Organization of Agriculture

• * Agribusiness integration of various steps of production in the food processing industry usually done by transnational corporations.
  • System of resources, transportation, communication, information and consumers, * Vertical integration Owning several small businesses involved in different steps of a product
    • Consequence of globalization and green revolution small are no longer available.
• Tech improvements include better transportation and better fertalizers.

5.8: Von Thunen Model

• Created in 1826 by Johann Von. Model was isotropic:
  • flat and featureless with the same Soils, terrain, and climate
    *Pattern is intensive to extensive or perishable to less Perishable
    * Ring 1: Horticulture(Market gardening and Dairy)
    * Ring 2: Forest need for construction Need and for fuel
    * Ring 3: Various Crops and Grains
    *it still applies today when adapted to actual conditions and changes in technology
    *The model assumed that land was flat but real land includes rivers, mts etc can change how the rings occur.