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What is Agriculture?
• Agriculture: The purposeful tending of crops and livestock in order to produce food and fiber.
• About half of the grains grown in the United States are consumed by people
• The other half is utilized for livestock feed
Economic Activities
• Primary Economic Activities: Economic activity concerned with the direct extraction of natural resources from the environment-such as mining, fishing, lumbering, and especially agriculture.
• Secondary Economic Activities: Economic activity involving the processing of raw materials and their transformation into the finished industrial products; the manufacturing sector.
Economic Activities (cont.)
• Tertiary Economic Activities: Economic activity associated with the provision of services-such as transportation, banking, retailing, education, and routine office-based jobs.
• Quaternary Economic Activities: Service sector industries concerned with the collection, processing, and manipulation of information and capital. Examples include finance, administration, insurance, and legal services.
Economic Activities (cont.)
• Quinary Economic Activities: Service sector industries that require a high level of specialized knowledge or technical skill. Examples include scientific research and high-level management.
Hunters and Gatherers
• Before modern day agriculture, there were hunters and gatherers
• Differed based on region
• American Indians near the Pacific Ocean fished for salmon
• Those in northern North America migrated along with caribou herds
First Agricultural Revolution
• Dates back 10,000 years• Time when both plant and animal domestication
originated• Plant Domestication: Genetic modification of a
plant such that its reproductive success depends on human intervention.
• Animal Domestication: Genetic modification of an animal such that it is rendered more amenable to human control.
Subsistence Agriculture
• Subsistence Agriculture: Growing only enough food to survive.
• Subsistence farmers utilize the natural environment
• Farmers that practice this often live in South and Middle America, and South and Southeast Asia
• When a surplus occurs, it is shared with other members of the community
Second Agricultural Revolution
• Second Agricultural Revolution: Witnessed improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, and storage of farm produce
• Benefited from the Industrial Revolution
• Composed of a series of innovations, improvements and techniques.
• Moved agriculture beyond the levels of subsistence
Von Thünen’s Model
• Described as the first effort to analyze the spatial character of economic character.
Third Agricultural Revolution/ Green Revolution
• Began as early as the 1930s• Currently in progress• Agricultural scientists began to manipulate
seeds of crops in a process known as genetic modification
• Genetically modified organisms (GMOs): Crops that carry new traits that have been inserted through advanced genetic engineering methods.
Landownership
*Rectangular Survey System/Township and Range: A rectangular land division scheme designed by Thomas Jefferson to disperse settlers evenly across farmlands of the U.S. interior
*Appears with a checkerboard pattern across agricultural fields
*Is the most popular system in the United States today
Landownership (cont.)
*Metes and Bounds Survey: A system that relies on descriptions of the land ownership and natural features such as streams or trees.
*The U.S. abandoned this technique in favor of the rectangular survey system
*Longlot Survey System: System in which land is divided into narrow parcels.
Villages
• Traditional farm villages are common today in India, Sub-Saharan Africa, China and Southeast Asia
• These villages often rely on subsistence agriculture
• Europe contains villages that are clustered on hilltops
• Modern villages are often arranged in a grid pattern
Types of Agriculture
• Commercial Agriculture: Large scale farming and ranching operations that employ vast land bases, large mechanized equipment, factory-type labor forces and the latest technology.
• Monoculture: Dependence on a single agricultural commodity.
• Ex. Sri Lanka is known for tea and Ghana is known for cocoa
Types of Agriculture (cont.)
• Plantation Agriculture: When cash crops are grown on large estates (an example of a cash crop is sugarcane).
• Mediterranean Agriculture: Specialized farming that occurs only in areas where the dry-summer Mediterranean climate prevails.
Illegal Drugs
• There is a high demand for illegal drugs, which makes them classify as cash crops
• Coca (which is used to make cocaine) is grown in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia
• Heroin and opium come from opium poppy plants, grown in Southeast and Southwest Asia
• Over 90% of illegal opium production worldwide comes from Afghanistan and Myanmar (according to the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention
Climate Classification System
• Köppen Climate Classification System: A system created by Wladimir Köppen to classify the world’s climates based on temperature and precipitation
• His system goes on to create climate regions
• Climate Regions: areas with similar climatic characteristics
Environmental Impacts
• Chemicals, such as pesticides and growth hormones for plants and livestock, impact the environment
• Deforestation has also increased over the years as agriculture is expanding
• Droughts also occur, making less vegetation grow
• Desertification: when humans destroy soil vegetation through overuse of land for livestock grazing or crop production
Agribusiness
• Agribusiness: General term for the businesses that provide the vast array of goods and services that support the agriculture industry
• It serves to connect local farms with a spatially extensive web of production and exchange