Agriculture Land Use Patterns

Unit Five: Agriculture Land Use Patterns

• Overview of agriculture land use patterns, monocropping, and consequences of agriculture, including land degradation.
• Connecting back to the CED (Course Exam Description), which outlines the topics that could be on the AP Human Geography exam.
• Guided notes are available for active learning during the review.

Shout Outs

• Locations represented include Louisiana, Iowa, Texas, South Florida, Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia, South Carolina, New York, Nebraska, Wisconsin.
• Live streams scheduled for Saturday at 3:00 PM Central time and Sunday with two live streams, one at 7 PM Central time for Unit 7 and another at 3 PM for Ultimate Review Packet (URP) holders.

Agriculture Review

• Unit Five review focusing on agriculture and farm practices.
• Upcoming live streams scheduled throughout the weekend and on Monday.
• Origin of crops and their relation to site factors.

Crop Origins and Site Factors

• Focus on how different crops are produced in areas with specific site factors (absolute location) versus situation (relative connections between places).
• Not necessary to memorize every crop origin, but have a general idea from each region.

Intensive vs. Extensive Farming

• Intensive Farming:
  • Uses less land, more capital (money, machinery), and potentially more labor.
  • Located closer to population centers due to perishable products and higher transportation costs.
• Extensive Farming:
  • Uses more land, less labor, and less capital.
  • Located farther from markets and population centers to save costs.

Types of Intensive Farming

• Plantation Agriculture

  • Located in less economically developed areas (periphery, semi-periphery).
  • Production for core countries (more economically developed) due to cheaper labor.

• Mixed Crop and Livestock

  • An advantage is dispersing work and income throughout the year for farmers.

• Market Gardening (Truck Farming)

  • Due to preservatives and growing seasons, often located in the southeastern United States.
  • Shipping across the country is facilitated by preservatives and climate.

• Cash Crop:

  • Crops grown for sale.
  • Arable land being diverted to produce cash crops for export instead of food for the local community.

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Types of Extensive Farming Practices

• Shifting Cultivation
  • Involves slash and burn agriculture to add nutrients to the soil.
  • Rotating plots of land after nutrients are depleted.
• Nomadic Herding
  • Form of pastoral nomadism where people move with their livestock within a territory, following food and water sources.
  • Practiced in areas where sedentary agriculture (staying in one spot) is impossible.
• Ranching
  • Often found in more economically developed areas.
  • Located farther away from markets due to the amount of land required.
  • Historically, animals walked to slaughterhouses to reduce transportation costs.
• Transhumance
  • Migration between highlands and lowlands based on seasons.
  • Cyclical migration connected to seasonal changes, involving livestock, but focused on specific seasonal movements.
• Fallow:
  • Leaving land intentionally uncultivated to restore nutrients in the soil.
• Yield:
  • Agricultural production in a specific area.

Settlement Patterns

• Clustered: People are packed together with very little space between buildings.
• Dispersed: A lot of space between the buildings or space between the different activities.
• Linear: Things are going to be arranged in kind of a line.

Survey Methods

• Long Lots
  • Narrow parcels of land, often connected to a waterway.
  • Used to give everyone access to the waterway for shipping products.
• Meets and Bounds
  • Boundary based off of the different landmarks in the area.
  • Boundary goes from house to big oak tree to the river.
• Township and Range
  • Grid pattern using longitude and latitude.

Agricultural Revolutions

• Fertile Crescent: First agricultural revolution.
• Columbian Exchange: Exchange of crops between the New World and the Old World, including potatoes, livestock, and diseases.

First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution)

• Transition from nomadic to sedentary lifestyle.
• Shift happens by accident.
• Allowed for modern-day society. Once we can have a food surplus, now we're all of a sudden able to have different social hierarchies.

Second Agricultural Revolution

• Starts with the industrial revolution.
• Innovations increase production and mechanized farming (seed drill, threshing machines).
• Leads to the enclosure movement where common land became private.
• Inventions, industrial revolution, demographic transition model (stage 2), rural to urban migration, and increased factory jobs.
• Enclosure movement: private ownership happened with land and farmers owned that area, then they were incentivized to make sure they took care of their land because it was theirs.

Green Revolution

• Big increase in agricultural production from high yield crop varieties (hybrid seeds).
• Also due to chemical fertilizers, pesticides, some modern irrigation, and more mechanization.
• Norman Borlaug: the father of the green revolution (semi-dwarf wheat variety).
• Revolution showed that our food production was not arithmetic, that we could actually produce a lot more food.
• Hybrid seeds by using crossbreeding, fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation.

Consequences of Green Revolution

• Environmental degradation (more fertilizers and pesticides).
• Water depletion.
• Loss of agricultural biodiversity.
• Economic dependence (periphery and semi-periphery countries become dependent on core countries).
• Agro-businesses coming after there.

Monocropping

• Cultivating one single crop year after a year.
• Takes the same nutrients out of the ground, and it puts more stress on my ecosystem there, on my land biodiversity, so monocropping would go against biodiversity.
• Done because it is more profitable.

Subsistence vs. Commercial Agriculture

• Subsistence: Producing for oneself, their family, the local community.
• Commercial: Producing to make money and profit, always going to be closer to urban area, market.

Large-Scale Commercial Agriculture:

• Use of advanced technology, geospatial technology, GPS, satellite image remote sensing.

Commodity Chains:

• The path a commodity takes from its raw form.

Carrying Capacity:

• The maximum number of people, animals, living organisms that can be supported in an area.
• If you go over it, we'll start to see it's no longer sustainable, and then we start doing more damage to the land.

Economies of Scale:

• The cost decreases, that individual cost is what is going down.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs):

• The genetically modified organisms, just realize this is different than a hybrid seed, where it's not just using crossbreeding.
• Come after the green revolution.

Bid Rent Theory

• Demand is up here, markets don't like the gaps.

Von Tunin's Model

• Concentric rings around a central market representing different agricultural activities.
• Factors in bid rent theory, transportation costs, and perishability of products.
• Dairy farming and forests are located closest to the market due to perishability and transportation costs.
• Assumptions: all land is similar, isolated state, farmers maximize profit.

Globalization and Agriculture

• Supply Chain: Network of people, organizations, activities, and resources involved in the production and sale of products.
• Interdependence: Countries rely on each other for resources, goods, and services.
• Commodity Dependence: Country has more than 60% of its total export made up of just commodities.
• Net Importer vs. Net Exporter: Whether a country imports more than it exports or vice versa.

Environmental Consequences of Agriculture

• Deforestation: Clearing forests for other land uses.
• Pastoral Nomads: Herders migrating with livestock.
• Irrigation: Removing water from one place to another. It could lead to soil salinization.
• Soil Erosion: Wearing away of topsoil.
• Terrace Farming: Building steps into the side of hills or mountains for farming.
• Draining Wetlands: Wetlands act as a filtration system; draining them leads to water runoff.
• Soil Salinization: Accumulation of salt in the soil, often due to over-irrigation.