Agriculture and Food

1
Agriculture and Food
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Traditional Agricultural Geography

• Hunting and gathering
• Subsistence agriculture
• Commercial agriculture

Broiler farm, Mississippi
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Global Distribution of Agriculture
4
Shifting Cultivation

• Field Preparation
• Step 1 Cut vegetation
• Step 2 Burn vegetation
• Step 3 Nutrients in vegetation released
• Step 4 Plant crops in naturally fertilized
  field
• Step 5 Repeat planting until field yields
  diminishing returns
• Step 6 Abandon field
• Step 7 Return to field in 20 years when
  regeneration has occurred

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Shifting cultivation and Intertillage

• Intertillage is the planting of different crops
  together in the same field.
• Benefits include
• Spreading out food production over the growing
  season
• Reducing disease and pest loss
• Protection from loss of soil moisture
• Erosion control

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Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

• Effective and efficient use of small parcels of
  land
• Highly productive
• Very labor intensive
• Natural fertilizers
• Rice
• where summer rainfall is plentiful
• Double cropping
• wheat, barley, corn and oats
• Drier and cooler climates

7
Pastoralism

• Pastoralism involves the breeding and herding of
  animals to satisfy the human needs for food,
  shelter, and clothing.
• Usually practiced in cold and/or dry climates in
  savannas (grasslands, deserts, steppes (lightly
  wooded, grassy plains)
• Can be sedentary or nomadic
• Cattle, sheep, goats and camels
• Small groups of families (20 families)

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Pastoralism and Transhumance in the Mediterranean
region
Transhumance is an effective adaptation to
temporal (seasonal) rhythms.
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Agricultural Revolution Industrialization

• Third Agricultural Revolution late 19th century
• Mechanization
• Chemical farming
• Food manufacturing

• First Agricultural Revolution
• Development of seed agriculture
• Use of plow and draft animals
• Second Agricultural Revolution (mid 18th century)
• Dramatic improvements in outputs, such as crop
  and livestock yields
• Such innovations as the improved yoke for oxen
  and the replacement of the ox with the horse
• New inputs to agricultural production, such as
  the application of fertilizers and field drainage
• Industrial Revolution

Fourth Agricultural revolution?
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The Industrialization of Agriculture

• Agricultural Industrialization
• integrated
• multilevel (or vertically organized)
• industrial process
• production, storage, processing, distribution,
  marketing, and retailing.
• Three Important Developments
• Machines replace and/or enhance human labor
• Use of innovative inputs to supplement, alter, or
  replace biological outputs
• E.g, fertilizers and other agrochemicals, hybrid
  seeds, biotechnologies
• The development of industrial substitutes for
  agricultural products.
• Nutrasweet in stead of sugar artificial
  thickeners instead of cornstarch or flour

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Global Fertilizer Use
The United States and other core European
countries export a great deal of food products,
and fertilizers enable them to do so.
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A Look at the Green Revolution
Begun by Norman Borlaug (and others) in early
1940s, idea was to develop new seed varieties
that would produce higher yields, but in the
process it was realized that greater applications
of nitrogen-based fertilizers, pesticides and
irrigation to achieve good results.
Dramatically increased grain outputs
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Global Distribution of Maize Production
The widespread production of grains throughout
the globe, particularly maize, has been one of
the successes of the green revolution.
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Effects of the Green Revolution
This map illustrates the increased yields of
protein crops, root crops, other cereals, maize,
rice, and wheat brought about by the green
revolution.
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Criticisms of Green Revolution

• Socio-Economic
• made agriculture increasingly dependent on
  markets and has contributed to a commoditization
  of inputs
• e.g., purchase inputs rather than produced on
  farm
• heavily dependent on the inputs of chemical
  fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
• In theory, HYVs, fertilizer, pesticides and
  herbicides and irrigation, were perceived to be
  scale neutral
• In practice
• encouraged a development of large-scale
  industrial agriculture at the expense of small
  farmers, who were unable to compete
• some evidence G.R.has widened income disparities
  in rural areas, making the poor worse off

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Criticisms of Green Revolution

• Environmental
• contributed to water pollution and increased soil
  salinity across the developing world
• heavy reliance on pesticides and herbicides
• sometimes led to the erosion of soil flora and
  fauna
• further reducing soil fertility or natural
  mechanisms of pest control.

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Criticisms of Green Revolution

• Socio-cultural-environmental
• reduction of biodiversity and food quality.
• reducing the pool of genes available to farmers
  for breeding and improving their stock of seeds.
• often have inferior nutritional value
• local knowledge has been overlooked,

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Fiala, N. 2009. Scientific American Feb, pp.
72-74
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Fiala, N. 2009. Scientific American Feb, pp.
72-74
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Fiala, N. 2009. Scientific American Feb, pp.
72-74
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Fiala, N. 2009. Scientific American Feb, pp.
72-74
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Fiala, N. 2009. Scientific American Feb, pp.
72-74
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Food Chains
Rice of the Gambia River
Kansas City stockyards
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Biotechnology
Ethiopian coffee plantation
Monsanto Corporation
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The New Geography of Food and Agriculture
New Zealand agricultural production
Kiwi production
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The Impact of the Environment on Agriculture
Modern irrigation system
Poisoned crane, Hungary
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Desertification in the Sahel
Severe and largely permanent loss of vegetation
and topsoil
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Problems Prospects

• Famine and Undernutrition
• Undernutrition is the inadequate intake of one or
  more nutrients and/or of calories.
• Famine is acute starvation associated with a
  sharp increase in mortality.
• Genetically Modified Organisms and the Global
  Food System
• A genetically modified organism, or GMO
• Urban Agriculture
• Urban agriculture is the establishment or
  performance of agricultural practices in or near
  an urban or citylike setting.

Protesters at the World Trade Organization
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National Regulatory Responses to GMOs
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Main Points

• Agriculture has been transformed into a globally
  integrated system.
• Agriculture has proceeded through three
  revolutionary phases.
• The introduction of new technologies and other
  factors have dramatically shaped agriculture as
  we know it today.
• The industrialized agricultural system of todays
  world has developed from and largely displaced
  older agricultural practices.
• The contemporary agro-commodity system is
  organized around a chain of agribusiness
  components.
• Transformations in agriculture have had dramatic
  impacts on the environment.
• The biggest issues revolve around the
  availability and quality of food in the world.

Pesticide spraying, Nicaragua
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Plant and Animal Domestication
Plant and animal domestication did not
predominate in any one continent but was spread
out across the globe.
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Gender Division of Labor
Intensive subsistence agriculture
Men clear away vegetation, cut down trees, and
burn stumps. Women sow seeds and harvest the
crops.
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The Blue Revolution
The Blue Revolution was the introduction of
motorized and larger boats, processing technology
and infrastructure, and new production techniques
into peripheral country fisheries.
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Leading Importers of Shrimp
Aquaculture has found its biggest economic
successes in catering to the demand of affluent
consumers in the core for products like shrimp
and salmon.
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Old and New Farm Machines
Contemporary machinery relies on computer chips
Vassar College student (1917)
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Tractors Per 1,000 Hectares
Tractor use, a measure of the mechanization of
agriculture, is highest in the core countries.
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Family Farm Ecosystems
Masai ecosystem management
Corporate farms emerged
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Global Restructuring of Agricultural Systems

• Forces of Globalization
• Agriculture is one part of a complex and
  interrelated worldwide economic system.
• Agricultural Change and Development Policies in
  Latin America
• Land reform
• Nontraditional agricultural exports (NTAEs)
• The Organization of the Agro-Food System
• Agribusiness is a system rather than a kind of
  corporate entity.
• A food chain is composed of five central and
  connected sectors with four contextual elements
  acting as external mediating forces.