Agriculture: Types and Practices

• Agriculture involves growing plants and raising animals for food, sustenance, or sale.

Types of Agriculture

• Intensive agriculture uses significant labor on smaller land areas.
• Extensive agriculture utilizes less labor across larger land areas.

Intensive Agriculture Types

• Market gardening involves small-scale fruit and vegetable production for local markets.
• Plantation farming are large operations in LDCs (Less Developed Countries) that specialize in one or two high-demand crops for export to MDCs (More Developed Countries), and are often owned by multinational corporations from MDCs.
• Mixed crop and livestock farming raises crops to feed livestock, then sells animal products. Crop rotation is used for soil nourishment.
• Intensive subsistence farming produces enough food for the farmer's family alone. It comes in two types: wet rice dominant and wet rice non-dominant.

Extensive Agriculture Types

• Shifting cultivation involves farming a patch of land until it becomes infertile.
• Slash-and-burn agriculture clears vegetation with fire to add nutrients back to the soil.
• Pastoralism is the breeding and herding of animals for food, shelter, and clothing. It can be sedentary or nomadic and is common in arid climates. It is declining worldwide due to land loss.
• Ranching raises animals on large plots of land for grazing, typically in MDCs. Former ranches have been converted into fattening farms.

Factors Affecting Agriculture

• Topography: A mountainous area can make farming difficult.
• Climate: Determines what crops can be grown.

Climate Types

• Mediterranean: Hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters with hilly terrain. This climate supports wheat, barley, vine and tree crops, olives, and figs primarily for human consumption.
• Tropical: Characterized by hot, humid conditions, typically within 20 degrees north and south of the equator. Crops include cassava, bananas, sugarcane, sweet potato, and rice.
• Dry: Hot, sandy conditions with limited water sources, found in areas like the Southwestern US and Northern Africa. It supports cereal grains, corn, wheat, barley, and root crops like white yam.
• Moderate: Generally has two seasons, mild winter and summer, weather varies, and found on the edge of tropical climates. Cultivates strawberries, kale, radishes, snow peas, blueberries, and cotton.
• Continental: Located in the northern hemisphere, interior of continents, north of moderate climate zones. Wide temperature fluctuations, four seasons, and supports apples, evergreen trees, maple trees, and pumpkins.

Invention of Agriculture

• Influenced by the end of the last Ice Age and preferences for living in a fixed place.
• It possibly started by accidentally or experimentally planting damaged or discarded food.

Early Agricultural Hearths

• Southwest Asia (Fertile Crescent): Barley and wheat.
• Southeast Asia: Rice.
• Americas: Beans, cotton, potato, maize (corn).
• Africa: Sorghum (yams).

Animal Domestication

• Southwest Asia: Dogs, cattle, goats, pigs, and sheep.
• Central Asia: Horse.
• Americas: Llamas in South America, but no other major animals.

Differences Between Commercial and Subsistence Farming

• Purpose: Subsistence farms for survival, while commercial farms for profit.
• Size: Subsistence farms are typically small, commercial farms are typically larger.
• Technology: Limited technology in subsistence farming; commercial farming uses machinery, chemicals, and GMOs.
• Businesses: Subsistence farms may trade small surpluses, while commercial farms supply major businesses.
• Labor Force: A high percentage of the population farms in subsistence farming, while a small percentage farms commercially.

Farming Types and Locations

• Shifting Cultivation: Subsistence farming; tropical regions.
• Pastoral Nomadism: Subsistence farming; regions where growing is difficult.
• Intensive Subsistence Agriculture: Subsistence farming; wet rice dominant and non-wet rice areas in Asia, Central America, and Africa.
• Mixed Crop and Livestock: Commercial farming; moderate climates.
• Dairy Farming: Commercial farming; moderate climates.
• Market Gardening: Commercial farming; USA and Australia.
• Livestock Farming: Commercial farming; moderate climates.
• Grain Farming: Commercial farming; USA and Asia.
• Mediterranean Gardening: Commercial farming; Mediterranean regions.
• Plantation Farming: Commercial farming; tropical climates.

Commercial Agriculture

• Driven by profit, closely tied to other businesses, and involves commodity chains.
• Commodity Chains: all steps from growing to processing to selling.
• High degree of transportation.
• Agribusiness: controls multiple commodity chain steps (e.g., Tyson, Dole, Monsanto).

Impacts of Agriculture

• Agricultural land use can cause pollution, land cover change, desertification, soil salinization, and conservation efforts.
• Alterations to the landscape may include slash-and-burn, terraces, irrigation, deforestation, and draining wetlands produce societal changes.

Societal Changes

• Movement from subsistence to commercial farming brings changes in diet, the role of women, and economics.
• Sustainability pillars include planet (environmental), people (social), and profit (economic).

Challenges in Feeding Populations

• Affects both MDCs and LDCs: lack of access to food, food deserts, distribution problems, adverse weather, and land lost to suburbanization. Food deserts are developed areas with limited access to good-quality fresh food at an affordable price.

Origin of Agriculture

• Deliberate modification of Earth’s surface through cultivating plants and/or raising animals.
• Originated from multiple hearths.

The First Agricultural Revolution

• Carl Sauer suggests the first tropical plant domestication occurred in S and SE Asia more than 14,000 years ago.
• Seed crops marked the first AR, originating in the Fertile Crescent.
• The domestication of animals likely occurred about 8,000 years ago.

The Second Agricultural Revolution

• Shifted from subsistence to surplus farming to feed factory workers.
• Great Britain’s Enclosure Act encouraged field consolidation into large, single-owner holdings.
• New technologies and advances in livestock breeding transformed farming.

The Third Agricultural Revolution

• Also known as The Green Revolution.
• Since the 1930s, agricultural scientists have experimented with technologically manipulated seed varieties to increase crop yields.
• Criticized for its use of genetically modified crops, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
• GMOs are found in 75% of all processed foods in the US.

Commercial vs. Subsistence Agriculture

• Subsistence farming primarily produces for the farm family's survival and is common in LDCs.
• Commercial farming primarily produces for sale off the farm and is common in MDCs.
• Commercial and subsistence agriculture is distinguished by the purpose of farming, percentage of farmers in the labor force, use of machinery, farm size, and relationship of farming to other businesses.

Diet and Nutrition

• Food consumption varies based on physical geography and socioeconomic development.
• Developing regions differ most in their primary sources of protein consumed.
• The UN estimates 850 million people are undernourished, with 99% in developing countries.

Farming Methods

• Shifting Cultivation: Land is cleared by slash-and-burn and tended for a few years, occurring in tropical rainforest regions.
• Intensive Subsistence: Found in high population and agricultural density areas, especially in East, South, and Southeast Asia. Little to no water is wasted to maximize production.
• Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming: Livestock fed with crops grown on the same farm, ¾ of income is from sale of animal products. Involves crop rotation to maintain fertility of land. Common products include corn and soybeans. Dairy Farming: Primarily in NE US, SE Canada, and NW Europe. 60% of the world’s milk comes from these areas and locations must be close to their market area because it’s highly perishable.
• Grain Farming: Largest commercial producer of grain is the US (KS, CO, OK, MT, WA, ND, SD). Livestock ranching is practiced in the US, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Australia.
• Plantation Farming: Usually involves the production of one crop in tropical areas like Latin America, Africa, and Asia (e.g., bananas, sugarcane, coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, rubber, palm oil).

Commercial Farming Challenges

• Overproduction, sustainable agriculture, population growth, and international trade. LDCs need to grow crops for subsistence, and people in MDCs want a larger variety of trade goods.

Strategies to Increase Food Supply

• Expanding agricultural land, increasing productivity through higher-yield seeds, fertilizers, and the Green Revolution.
• Identifying new sources of nutrients, and increasing trade.

Second Agricultural Revolution Effects

• Agricultural Changes and Shifting Demographics: Fewer, larger, and more productive farms decreased need for farm laborers.
• New farming techniques involved fertilizers, minerals, and soil conservation. Mechanization reduces the time it takes to plant and harvest.
• By the late 19th century, displaced laborers led to rural residents migrating to urban centers.
• U.S. Census of 1920 showed for the first that more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. Only 30% of the labor force worked in agriculture, less than half what it was in 1840.
• Improved life expectancy and mechanization increase the economic gap between LDCs and MDCs.