AgricultureAgriculture – the purposeful tending of crops

and raising of livestock in order to produce food and fiber.

Economic Activities• Primary economic activities

products closest to the ground• Secondary economic activities

Manufacturing of primary products into new products• Tertiary economic activities

service industry – connecting producers to consumers to facilitate trade

• Quaternary economic activitiesInformation or the exchange of goods

• Quinary economic activitestied into research or higher education

Agricultural Origins & Regions• Origins of agriculture

– Hunters and gatherers– Invention of agriculture

• Location of agricultural hearths– Vegetative planting– Seed agriculture

• Classifying agricultural regions– Subsistence vs. commercial agriculture– Mapping agricultural regions

The First Agricultural Revolution

• Where did plant domestication begin?

South and Southeast Asiaearly domestication of root crops, up to 14,000 years ago.

Southwest Asia (the Fertile Crescent)early domestication of seed crops, about 10,000 years ago.

Carl Sauer

• He studied the geography of the First Agricultural Revolution.

• Believed the experiments necessary to establish agriculture and settle in one place would occur in lands of plenty.

• Only in such places could people afford to experiment with raising plants and capturing and breeding animals.

Plant Domestication

• Sauer suggested Southeast and South Asia may have been the scene where 14,000 years ago the first domestication of tropical plants occurred.

• He believed that root crops (crops reproduced by cultivating either the roots or cutting from the plants, such as tubers like manioc or cassava, yams, and sweet potatoes) were first domesticated there.

• A similar development later occurred in northwestern South America

Seed Agriculture

• The planned cultivation of seed crops (plants that are reproduced by cultivating seeds) is a more complex process that involves seed selection, sowing, watering, and well-timed harvesting.

• The majority of geographers agree that the first incidents of seed agriculture took place in the Fertile Crescent region of Southwest Asia.

The Fertile Crescent – Where the planned cultivation of seed crops began.

- because of seed selection, plants got bigger over time- generated a surplus of wheat and barley- first integration of plant growing and animal raising

(used crops to feed livestock, used livestock tohelp grow crops)

Vegetative Planting Hearths

Fig. 10-1: There were several main heaths, or centers of origin, for vegetative crops (roots & tubers, etc.), from which the crops diffused to other areas. Carl Sauer suggested that Southeast Asia was a primary hearth.

Seed Agriculture Hearths

Fig. 10-2: Seed agriculture also originated in several hearths and diffused from those elsewhere.

World Areas of Agricultural Innovations

Carl Sauer identified 11 areas where agricultural innovations occurred.

Chief Source Regions of Important Crop Plant Domestications

Origins of Agriculture

Which of these areas are considered cultural hearths?

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Cradles of Civilization• Note the similarity

Second Agricultural Revolution• -coincides with the industrial revolution• -demands for food production were large-scale• Dramatic improvements in crop and livestock

yields• Improved yoke for oxen and replaces ox with

horse• New inputs like fertilizers and field drainage

systems• Communal farming systems replaced by enclosed

land run by individuals

The Third Agricultural Revolution

-Mechanization

-Chemical Farming with synthetic fertilizers

-Food manufacturing on a global scale

Von Thunen Model• Von Thunen Model

– What farmers produce varies by distance from the town, with livestock raising farthest from town.

– Cost of transportation governs use of land.

– First effort to analyze the spatial character of economic activity.

Von Thunen Theory of Agricultural Production

Assumptions of the modelVariations on the model

Classifying Agricultural Regions

Subsistence Agriculture• Shifting Cultivation• Pastoral Nomadism • Intensive Subsistence

Agriculture

Commercial Agriculture

• Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming

• Dairy Farming• Grain Farming• Livestock Ranching• Mediterranean

Agriculture• Truck Farming

Subsistence Agriculture Regions

Shifting Cultivation Vegetation “slashed” and then burned.

Soil remains fertile for 2-3 years. Then people move on.

where: tropical rainforests. Amazon, Central and West Africa, Southeast Asia

Crops: upland rice (S.E. Asia), maize and manioc (S. America), millet and sorghum (Africa)

Declining at hands of ranching and logging.

Pastoral NomadismThe breeding and herding of

domesticated animals for subsistence.

where: arid and semi-arid areas of N. Africa, Middle East, Central Asia

animals: Camel, Goats, Sheep, Cattle transhumance: seasonal migrations

from highlands to lowlandsMost nomads are being pressured into

sedentary life as land is used for agriculture or mining.

Bedouin Shepherd

Somali Nomad and Tent

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

The Fields of Bali

• Wet Rice Dominant where: S.E. Asia, E. India, S.E.

China very labor intensive production

of rice, including transfer to sawah, or paddies

most important source of food in Asia

grown on flat, or terraced land

Double cropping is used in warm winter areas of S. China and Taiwan

Thai Rice Farmers

Commercial AgricultureValue-Added

Very little of the value of most commercial products comes from the raw materials

“adding value” is the key to high profit margins

Roughly 6% of the price of cereal is the cost of the grain.

Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming

Mixed Crop and Livestock FarmingWhere: Ohio to Dakotas, centered on Iowa; much of

Europe from France to Russia crops: corn (most common), soybeans In U.S. 80% of product fed to pigs and cattle

Highly inefficient use of natural resources Pounds of grain to make 1 lb. beef: 10 Gallons of water to make 1 1b wheat: 25 Gallons of water to make 1 1b. beef: 2500

Dairy FarmingWhere: near urban areas in

N.E. United States, Southeast Canada, N.W. Europe- Over 90% of cow’s milk is produced in developed countries. Value is added as cheese, yogurt, etc.

Dairy Farm, WisconsinVon Thunen’s theories are the beginning

of location economics and analysis (1826)Locational Theory : butter and cheese more common than milk with increasing distance from cities and in West.

Milkshed : historically defined by spoilage threat; refrigerated trucks changed this.

Grain Farming

Where: worldwide, but U.S. and Russia predominant

Crops: wheat winter wheat: Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma spring wheat: Dakotas, Montana, southern

CanadaHighly mechanized: combines, worth hundreds

of thousands of dollars, migrate northward in U.S., following the harvest.

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Crop Rotation

Livestock RanchingWhere: arid or semi-arid areas of western U.S.,

Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Spain and Portugal.History: initially open range, now sedentary with

transportation changes.Environmental effects:

1) overgrazing has damaged much of the world’s arid grasslands (< 1% of U.S. remain!)

2) destruction of the rainforest is motivated by Brazilian desires for fashionable cattle ranches

Mediterranean AgricultureWhere: areas surrounding the Mediterranean,

California, Oregon, Chile, South Africa, Australia

Climate has summer dry season. Landscape is mountainous.

• Highly valuable crops: olives, grapes, nuts, fruits and vegetables; winter wheat

• California: high quality land is being lost to suburbanization; initially offset by irrigation

Commercial Gardening and Fruit

FarmingWhere: U.S. Southeast, New England, near

cities around the world

• crops: high profit vegetables and fruits demanded by wealthy urban populations: apples, asparagus, cherries, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.

• mechanization: such truck farming is highly mechanized and labor costs are further reduced by the use of cheap immigrant (and illegal) labor.

• distribution: situated near urban markets.

• large scale mono-cropping of profitable products not able to be grown in Europe or U.S.

• where: tropical lowland Periphery• crops: cotton, sugar cane, coffee,

rubber, cocoa, bananas, tea, coconuts, palm oil.

What are potential problems with this type of agriculture? Environmental? Social?

Plantation Farming

Transhumance: the movement of herds according to seasonal rhythms, warmer, lowland areas in the winter

and cooler, highland areas in summer.

Making Sense of the Map of US Agricultural Regions

The Green Revolution in Agriculture

• Green Revolution History• Acreage and Yield Trends• Technical Problems• Ethical Issues

The term green revolution refers to the development and adoption of high yielding cereal grains in the less developed world during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Very large short term gains in grain output have allowed food supplies to grow faster than populations, until very recently.

History of Green Revolution

1943 Rockefeller Foundation begins work on short stature hybrid corn in Mexico

1960s Hybrid strains of rice, wheat, and corn show great success in S.E. Asia, and Latin America.

1970 Head of Mexican corn program, Borlaug, wins Nobel Peace Prize

1990s Growth in food supply continues, but slows to below the rate of population growth, as the results of unsustainable farming practices take effect.

Acreage and Yield TrendsGains were made by:

• Dwarf varieties: plants are bred to allocate more of their photosynthetic output to grain and less to vegetative parts.

• Planting in closer rows, allowed by herbicides, increases yields.

• Bred to be less sensitive to day length, thus double-cropping is more plausible.

• Very sensitive to inputs of fertilizer and water.

Technical and Resource Limitation Problems

• Heavy Use of Fresh Water

• High Dependence on Technology and Machinery Provided/Sold by Core Countries

• Heavy Use of Pesticides and Fertilizer

• Reduced Genetic Diversity / Increased Blight Vulnerability

• Questionable Overall Sustainability

Ethical Issues• Starvation of many prevented, but extra food

may lead to higher birth rates.

• Life expectancy in less developed countries increased by 10 years in less than two decades (43 in 1950’s to 53 in 1970’s).

• Dependency on core countries increased; rich-poor gap increased.

• Wealthy farmers and multinational companies do well, small farmers become wage laborers or unemployed – dependent.

• More at risk? More people malnourished/starving today than in 1950 (but lower as a percentage).

• U.S. spends $10,000,000,000 year on farm subsidies, damaging farmers and markets in LDCs.

“Our incredible successes as a species are largely derived from this choice, but the biggest threats to our existence stem from the same decision.” Jared Diamond, 1999

Emergence of new human diseases from animal diseases (i.e. smallpox, measles)

• Dense urban populations allow spread/persistence of disease Lower standard of living for many people.

• Archaeological evidence of serious mal-nourishment among early farmers.

• Many modern impoverished and malnourished farmers.• Famine virtually non-existent in hunter-gatherer societies.

Increased susceptibility to plant blights and increased dependence on complex economic systems.

Environmental degradation• topsoil loss (75% in U.S.), desertification, eutrophication, PCBs in fish, DDT

and other pesticides

Agricultural ‘Success’?

Biotechnology in Agriculture

• Cloning• Recombinant DNABT Corn Debate (transgenic maize)

World Undernourishment

?Hunger in America?

Contemporary Food Consumption

Is there a spatial relationship to the original hearths?

Contemporary Food Production

Agriculture is a global economy.

Agricultural Revolutions

Technology allows much greater production (surplus) with less human labor, but often has high social and environmental costs.

Metal plows, Reapers, Cotton Gin Tractors (Internal Combustion Engine) Combines Chemical Pesticides/Fertilizers Hybrid Crops Genetically-modified Crops

Agribusiness:The industrialization of agriculture

Modern commercial farming is very dependent on inputs of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides.

Oil is required to make fertilizer and pesticides. It takes 10 calories of energy to create 1 calorie of

food in modern agriculture. Small farmer can’t buy needed equipment and

supplies. Fewer than 2% of U.S. population works in

agriculture

What type of economic activity is farming in an MDC?

• Farming in MDCs is considered a multi-faceted production.- Farmers are extracting from the earth= a primary economic

activity-Farmers process their crops or cattle= a secondary activity-Farmers sell it= a tertiary activity-Farmers use high-tech equipment to follow yields, use

research to develop and use high-tech pesticides and fertilizers, and use computers to analyze their profit margins= quaternary economic activities

…………..In other words, Agriculture in MDCs is BIG BUSINESS…and a combination of all types of economic activities. When a farm controls all facets of production it is called VERTICAL INTEGRATION.

What’s the difference?

More Developed Countries• In MDCs, only 2% of the

workforce are farmers yet the farms use more land.

• In MDCs, farming is big business called agri-business. Most farmers farm for a food processing company. The gov’t can subsidize and pay you to grow specific crops to manage crop prices.

Less Developed Countries• In LDCs, 60% of the

workforce are farmers.• In LDCs, farming is done for

the family to eat and survive.

• Farm size is small.• LDCs can be used for

plantation farming by MDCs. Buy “fair trade” products to support LDC workers

Fair Trade Agriculture

• Fair Trade Coffee –shade grown coffee produced by certified fair trade farmers, who then sell the coffee directly to coffee importers.

- guarantees a “fair trade price”- over 500,000 farmers- produced in more than 20 countries- often organically produced

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Subsidies: Reasons & Results• Reasons

– Protects farmers– National security– Tradition– Political (electoral college)

• Results– Low price– Restricts competition– Effect on trade and production

Economic Issues of Agriculture

• Challenges for commercial farmers– Overproduction– Sustainable agriculture

• Challenges for subsistence farmers– Population growth– International trade

• Increasing food supply

Organic Farm in Washington

There is limited use of chemicals and heavy machinery on organic farms such as this one in Whatcom County, Washington state.

Response to biotechnology:Organic Farming

• Organic farming has been one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. agriculture for over a decade.

• The U.S. had under a million acres of certified organic farmland when Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990.

• By the time USDA implemented national organic standards in 2002, certified organic farmland had doubled, and doubled again between 2002 and 2005. Organic livestock sectors have grown even faster.

Rapid growth on small base

• While adoption of organic farming systems showed strong gains between 1992 and 2005 and the adoption rate remains high, the overall adoption level is still low—only about 0.5 percent of all U.S. cropland and 0.5 percent of all U.S. pasture was certified organic in 2005..

National Trend

• In 2005, for the first time, all 50 States in the U.S. had some certified organic farmland.

• 4.0 million acres of farmland in organic production in 2005

• 1.7 million acres of cropland• 2.3 million acres of rangeland and pasture

• California remains the leading State in certified organic cropland, with over 220,000 acres, mostly for fruit and vegetable production.

• Other top states for certified organic cropland include North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, and Idaho.

• USDA lifted restrictions on organic meat labeling in the late 1990s, and the organic poultry and beef sectors are now expanding rapidly.

Grass fed organic beef boom

• Over 40 States also had some certified organic rangeland and pasture in 2005,

• 4 states—Alaska, Texas, California and Montana—had more than 100,000 acres

Many U.S. producers are embracing organic farming

• to lower input costs, • conserve nonrenewable resources, • capture high-value markets,• boost farm income

Barriers to Diffusion

• high managerial costs• risks of shifting to a new way of farming,• limited awareness of organic farming systems,• lack of marketing and infrastructure,• inability to capture marketing economies.

http://www.storewars.org

Free-range Chickens

Free-range chickens on an organic farm in England.

Genetically Modified Foods

Genetically modified foods must be labeled in Europe but not in the U.S.

Genetically Engineered Foods What are they? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/programs/28gm_harvest.html

Teacher’s Guide to “Harvest of Fear” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/

• U.S. farmers have rapidly adopted genetically engineered (GE) soybeans, cotton, and corn with herbicide tolerance (HT) and/or insect resistance (Bt) traits over the 12-year period following commercial introduction

Industrial crops best suited to GE

• In the U.S., adoption of HT soybeans has expanded faster and more widely than that of other GE crops, reaching 91 percent of soybean acreage in 2007.

• The second most widely adopted GE crop, HT cotton, was planted on 70 percent of cotton acreage.

Biotechnology

WORLDWIDE IMPACT

• More than 250 million acres of biotech crops with HT and/or Bt traits were planted in 22 countries in 2006,

• U.S. accounting for about 54 percent • Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, China,

Paraguay, and South Africa together accounting for nearly 43 percent.

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Desertification is a major problem, particularly in Africa

• Physiologic pressure plus cycles of dry years results in over-stressing the soil and vegetation – thereby increasing the desert

• Practices leading to desertification– Overgrazing marginal lands– Planting in the year that a field should lie fallow– Trying to expand agriculture into areas where the

rainfall is too unreliable

Desertification Hazard

Fig. 10-14: The most severe desertification hazard is in several parts of semiarid Africa, and parts southwestern Asia, North and South America, and Australia.

Undernourished Proportion

Fig. 10-16: The proportion of under-nourished population has declined in most LDCs, but is much higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other areas of the world.

The Sahel

Fig. 10-18: The Sahel, which is south of the Sahara, frequently faces drought and food shortages, as does the Horn of Africa.

Loss of Productive FarmlandFarmland in danger of being suburbanized as cities expand into neighboring farmlands.

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Fish Harvest• Traditional fishing

– Physical and financial risks– Small fraction of global catch

• Modern fishing– Fisheries– Overfishing and depletion– Increasing regulation

• Aquaculture– Herding and domesticating aquatic species– Fertilizer production

World Fishing Grounds

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Aquaculture: On Land & Sea

• Great potential for using land not suited to farming & preserving fish species

Boat being built for fish farming

Artificial ponds for fish farming