Agriculture: Practices and Environmental Impact

• Subsistence agriculture focuses on producing food for personal consumption rather than large-scale profit.
• Feedlots confine large numbers of livestock in small spaces, feeding them high-grain diets to promote rapid fattening before slaughter.
• Horticulture is the cultivation of fruits, flowers, and vegetables, emphasizing high-quality production.
• Desertification is fertile land becoming arid, often due to poor farming practices and deforestation, most likely in grasslands and semi-arid regions.
• Free-range farming allows livestock to roam freely outside for at least part of the day.
• Transnational corporations operate in multiple countries, involved in manufacturing, sales, and research.
• Shifting cultivation involves clearing a plot of land, using it for a short time, and then abandoning it for a longer period.

Long-Term Environmental Impacts of Agriculture

• Shifting cultivation temporarily clears land for farming, then leaves it fallow for an extended period.
• Slash-and-burn agriculture cuts and burns vegetation to create a field called a swidden, such as the milpa system in Mexico and Central America.
• Industrial agriculture involves large-scale crop and animal production, often using chemical fertilizers and antibiotics.

Types of Agriculture in Different Regions

• Tropical regions: Shifting cultivation yields crops like maize, millet, and sorghum. Plantation agriculture focuses on single cash crops like bananas, coffee, or sugarcane.
• Temperate regions: Mixed farming combines crop cultivation, such as wheat or corn, and livestock raising, like cattle and pigs.
• Desert regions: Farming focuses on crops suited to arid conditions like sorghum, squash, peppers, and millet.
• Mediterranean regions: Agriculture focuses on citrus fruits, olives, grapes, and various vegetables.

Bid-Rent Theory

• Bid rent theory explains that land prices decrease further away from a city's central business district (CBD).
• There is a spatial pattern of higher land values near the CBD and lower values further out.
• Land use develops in concentric zones based on the ability to pay for proximity to the CBD.

Climate and Agriculture

• Climate determines which crops can grow in a region based on temperature, growing season length, and precipitation.
• Mixed crop and livestock farming is most common in mid-latitude climates.

Intensive vs. Extensive Agriculture:

• Intensive agriculture examples: Genetically modified crops resistant to insects and drought.
• Extensive agriculture examples: Slash and burn, shifting cultivation, and nomadic herding.

Irrigation:

• Irrigation artificially supplies water to crops through man-made systems.
• Types of irrigation: drip, subsurface, surface, and sprinkler.
• Center-pivot irrigation involves equipment rotating around a central point, watering a circular area.
• Irrigation effects include increased erosion, water quality deterioration, and surface water pollution.

Agricultural Hearths:

• Fertile Crescent: wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, peas, flax, and date palms
• Sub-Saharan Africa: maize, beans, rice
• Southeast Asia: millet and rice
• Mesoamerica: maize, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, pepper, and tomatoes

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs):

• GMOs alter the genetic makeup of plants or animals to give them specific traits.
• Scientists modify crops to increase yields, reduce pesticide needs, enhance nutrients, and improve food quality.

Second Agricultural Revolution:

• Increased food production
• Improved diets
• Longer life expectancies
• Population increase
• Mass migration to urban areas

Globalization of Agriculture:

• Consumers gain a larger variety of food at potentially lower prices.
• Producers can access larger markets and new agricultural technologies.
• Producers might face increased competition.

Green Revolution:

• The Green Revolution increased agricultural production through new crops and farming techniques.
• Success factors: irrigation, soil conditions, research support, and distribution of high-yield crops.
• Factors like lacking infrastructure caused failure in regions in Asia and Africa .

Women in Agriculture:

• Early on, women gathered plants, tended livestock, and managed food production.
• Today, women produce over 50% of the world’s food and make up 43% of the agricultural labor force.

Land Survey Methods:

• Long lot: Long strips of land stretching from a river or lake, providing water access.
• Metes and bounds: Uses landmarks to shows property boundaries, by drawing lines in a specific direction.

Commodity Chains:

• Commodity chains have driven economic pressures that often favor large operations.

Von Thunen Model

• The Von Thünen model explains how agricultural land use patterns are organized around a central market.
• The bid-rent curve illustrates how land users' willingness to pay for land varies with distance from the city center.

Farm Sizes:

• Fewer smaller and subsistence farms exist today due to increased productivity of larger farms.
• Science and technology increased farmers' productivity.

Meat Production:

• Global meat production has increased rapidly, quadrupling since 1961.

Environmental Impact of Chemicals:

• Widespread chemical use in agriculture leads to water pollution from runoff, harming aquatic life.