Global Agriculture

1. Global Agriculture

2. Agriculture • Agriculture—the principal enterprise of humankind through most of recorded history • Today remains the most important economic activity in the world • Employs 45 percent of the working population • In some parts of Asia and Africa, over 80 percent of labor force is engaged in agriculture

3. Employment Change By Sector in the U.S.

5. Agricultural regions • Formal agricultural regions • Peoples living in different environments develop new farming methods • Numerous spatial variations have been created • Shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn) • Essentially a land rotation system • Where it is practiced • Tropical lowlands and hills in the Americas • Africa • Southeast Asia • Indonesia

6. Formal Agricultural Regions

7. Formal Agricultural Regions See Figure 8.3 in your text for a better map

8. Shifting Cultivation • Shifting cultivation – how it is practiced • Small patches of land are cleared • When vegetation has dried, it is burned • These techniques give shifting agriculture the name “slash-and-burn” • Intertillage—the practice of planting taller, stronger crops to shelter lower, fragile ones from tropical downpours • Intertillage reveals a learning acquired over many centuries

9. Subsistence agriculture • Subsistence agriculture—Involves food production mainly for the family and local community rather than for market • Farmers keep few if any livestock, often relying on hunting and fishing for much of their food supply • Has proved an efficient adaptive strategy • Slash-and-burn farming may return more calories of food for the calories spent than modern mechanized agriculture • Has achieved sustainability for millennia in the absence of a population explosion

10. Subsistence Farming

11. Hunting and Gathering Systems Still practiced by indigenous peoples; now mixed with other systems

12. Pastoralism(animal herding)

13. Nomadic Herding

14. Nomads: Sahara Desert in North Africa

15. Transhumance: Movement of herds

16. Tibetan Plateau +15,000 feet

17. Nomads in the Andes Mts. Llama Herders (+14,000 feet) Cuzco

18. Reindeer Herders in Siberia

19. Subsistence problems • Need lots of land to feed few • Poor soils • Lack of technology • Yields have not increased for generations • No capital • No land ownership • Poorest agriculturalists

20. Deforestation and erosion

21. Deforestation and Erosion in Mountainous Areas

22. Intensive/Extensive Agriculture • Intensive • Small-area farms and ranches with high inputs of labor per acre and high output per acre. • Extensive • Large-area farms or ranches with low inputs of labor per acre and low output per acre.

23. Intensive Agriculture: Rice Paddy Farming

24. Rice Paddy Terraces

25. Rice Paddy Terraces, Philippines

26. Production methods capital intensive labor intensive ? vs.

28. Year Round Rice Production –- lands that used to be used for family subsistence are now used for commercialized farming with revenues going to the men.- women do the work of rice production and see little of the benefit because of the power relations in Gambia

29. Agriculture • Commercial Agriculture • Term used to describe large scale farming and ranching operations that employ vast land bases, large mechanized equipment, factory-type labor forces, and the latest technology. • roots are in colonial agriculture • today, global production made possible by advances in transportation and food storage

30. Advances in Transportation and Food Storage - Containerization of seaborne freight traffic - Refrigeration of containers, as they wait transport in Dunedin, New Zealand

31. Agriculture and Climate • Climate Regions (based on temperature and precipitation) help determine agriculture production. • Agriculture Regions – drier lands usually have livestock ranching and moister climates usually have grain production.

32. World Map of Climates Koppen Climate Classification System

33. Cash Crop and Plantation Agriculture Cotton and Rubber Luxury Crops Commercial Livestock, Fruit, and Grain Agriculture Subsistence Agriculture Mediterranean Agriculture Illegal Drugs World Map of Agriculture

34. Agribusiness and the Changing Geography of Agriculture • Commercialization of Crop Production With the development of new agricultural technologies, the production of agriculture has changed. - eg. -Poultry industry in the US -production is now concentrated -farming is turning into manufacturing

35. Organic Agriculture • Organic Agriculture – The production of crops without the use of synthetic or industrially produced pesticides and fertilizers or the raising of livestock without hormones, antibiotics, and synthetic feeds. - sales of organic foods on the rise - grown everywhere - demand in wealthier countries

36. Organic Agriculture

37. 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

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

39. Conclusions • Forms of agricultural vary from place to place • Patterns expressed as agricultural regions • Range from traditional to highly mechanized • All diverse systems rooted in ancient innovations of plant and animal domestication • Diffused from multiple points of origin • New innovations arose and diffused by expansion and relocation • New problems and concerns face us