Agriculture

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Agriculture

• Defined as the growing of crops and the tending
  of livestock, whether for the subsistence of the
  producers or for sale or exchange, has replaced
  hunting and gathering as economically the most
  significant of the primary activities.
• Covers 5.8 million sq. miles (10 of the earths
  total land area)
• Certain areas (Nepal and Bhutan) 90
• Europe 5

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Extensive Subsistence Agriculture

• Large use of land and little labor
• Two types of classified under Extenstive
• Nomadic Herding
• Shifting Cultivation

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Nomadic Herding

• Wandering controlled movement of livestock,
  solely dependent on natural forage, across a
  region.
• Characteristics are hardiness, mobility, and an
  ability to subsist on sparse forage.
• Animals provide milk, cheese, and meat for food
• Found in Africa (next slide), Asia, and South
  America.

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Shifting Cultivation

• Rotation of fields
• Swidden (English)
• Slash and burn
• Soil loses nutrients with too much farming. Need
  to find new dirt!!
• Destroying rainforests all over the tropics.
• Red dots represent fires burning all throughout
  Brazil into Bolivia. (taken by NASA in Sept. 2002)

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Shifting contnearly 5 of the worlds people
are engaged in tropical shifting.Crops corn,
millet, rice, manioc, yams, and sugarcane.
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Intensive Subsistence Agriculture
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Intensive cont

• Small land use
• Very labor intensive
• Changing, families feed their own from their
  plots while trading implementation for use on the
  fields.
• Found in SE Asia in the rice fields. There is no
  way to plant/harvest rice with machinery. Also
  produce wheat, maize, millet, peas, beans, etc

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Location of Intensive Subsistence Ganges River
Basin IndiaYangtze - China
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Green Revolution

• Crop yields go up from the same plot of land.
• The Green Rev. is aided by Population Pressures
  and new agriculture technologies.

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Commercial Agriculture

• Produce material for market
• Part of the exchange economy
• Usually consists of massive farms (1000 acres)
  or could be small lots of plants (coffee)

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Intensive Commercial Agriculture

• Large amounts of capital (, machinery,
  fertilizer, labor) in agriculture
• Olive harvesting

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Tobacco harvesting
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Peanut Harvesting
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Extensive Commercial Agriculture

• Farming that takes place further from the market
  on less expensive land.
• Large wheat farms as well as livestock ranching
• Farms 1000 acres in Kansas, ND or Ranches -
  Argentina, Brazil, Australia

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Von Thuens model
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Special Crops

• Mediterranean Agriculture
• Grapes, olives, oranges, figs, vegetables, etc
• Need warm temps and a great deal of sunshine

• Plantation Crops
• African coffee, Asian sugar, American cacao,
  tobacco, and rubber
• Introducing a foreign element into a native
  culture, alien labor force.

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Rubber Cacao
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Figs and Oranges