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GEOG 247 Cultural Geography Agriculture
AGRICULTURE
What is it?
Prof. Anthony Grande
Hunter College‐CUNY
Why and where did it begin?
©AFG 2015
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Agriculture
Modern Agriculture
a.k.a. Farming: The practice of cultivating crops and
the raising of animals.
– Agriculture is the deliberate modification of Earth’s
surface (through cultivation of plants and rearing of animals) to
obtain sustenance or economic gain.
– Uses methodologies developed by people in
response to physical geographic stimuli (as climate,
landforms, water availability) and social tenets (as customs
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and religious beliefs)
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Agriculture is a learned trait, therefore it is cultural.
Depends heavily on engineering, technology and the
biological and physical sciences.
Agricultural engineers determine irrigation, drainage,
conservation and channeling of water.
Agricultural chemistry deals with such issues as the use
of fertilizers, insecticides and fungicides, soil structure,
analysis of agricultural products and the nutritional needs
of farm animals.
Expensive equipment does the work of numerous
laborers.
Remote sensing and satellite technology are used to
analyze crop growth and development, soil moisture,
insect infestations, field contouring and planting tracts.
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At the Center of it All
TERMS
Domestication:
Agriculture (food
production) is the core
of human being. It
plays a pivotal role
between people, the
environment and
economic well-being.
The successful transformation of a plant or animal
species from a wild state to a condition of dependency
on human management usually with a distinct physical
change from its wild forbears.
In addition to managing crops and livestock to
produce food for people, the domestication process is
used to produce feed stock for animals, fiber for clothing and manufacturing, and alternative fuel supplies as
ethanol and other biomasses.
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More Terms
More Terms
Cultivate: to care for
Crop: any plant cultivated (cared for) by people.
Horticulture: the science, skill, or occupation of
cultivating plants, especially flowers, fruit, and
vegetables, in gardens or greenhouses.
Floriculture: the growing of flowers and ornamental
Agricultural hearth: source area for the
shrubs as a crop.
domestication of plants and animals
Aquaculture: the farming of ocean and freshwater
fish, plants and animals for human consumption
Subsistence agriculture: production of food for
one’s own or family’s use
Diet: the combination of food products (plant and
animal) consumed by people for nutritional gain.
Cuisine: the style of cooking or preparing food
Commercial agriculture: production of food for
sale or barter to others.
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Economic Geog Refresher
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World Hunger
 Primary economic activities: Economic activities that
involve the extraction of economically valuable products
from the earth, including agriculture, ranching, hunting
and gathering, fishing, forestry, mining, and quarrying.
 Secondary economic activities: Activities (e.g., manufacturing) that take a primary product and change it into
something else such processed foods, leather products
and biomass.
 Tertiary economic activities: Those service industries
that connect producers to consumers and facilitate
commerce and trade or help people meet their needs, as
food sellers, distributors and merchants.
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The Cultural Geography of Farming
The world produces enough food for all its
people yet economics and politics cause food
shortages. It is estimated that 800 million
people are malnourished , esp. in Africa.
Source: UN FAO, 2008
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The Cultural Geography of Farming
• Farming varies around the world in relation to cultural
and environmental factors. (Landscape)
• Elements of the physical environment, such as climate, soil,
and topography, set broad limits on agricultural products
and practices. (Ecology)
• Farmers make choices to modify the environment in a
variety of ways. (Interaction)
• Climate patterns influence the crops planted in a region,
and local soil conditions influence the crops planted on a
farm. (Regions)
• Through colonization, world wars, and multi-national corporations agricultural methods have spread world-wide.
(Diffusion)
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• Farmers choose from a variety of agricultural practices
and products, based on their perception of the value of
each alternative.
• These values are partly economic and partly cultural.
• How farmers deal with their physical environment varies
according to dietary preferences, availability of technology, and other cultural traditions.
• At a global scale, farmers increasingly pursue the most
profitable agriculture (aspects of agglomeration and comparative advantage come into play).
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Types of Agriculture
 Swidden/shifting
cultivation
 Paddy rice farming
 Peasant grain, root,
livestock farming
 Plantation agriculture
 Market gardening
 Livestock feeding
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Food Supply and Population
• Before the advent of agriculture, hunting, gathering, and
fishing were the most common means of subsistence
throughout the world
– The size of hunting and gathering clans varied
according to climate and resource availability.
– Hunting and gathering communities in areas of abundance could support larger populations that were
concentrated in smaller areas.
 How did hunter/gatherer peoples increase their food
supplies?
Grain farming
Dairying
Nomadic herding
Livestock ranching
Urban agriculture
Aquaculture/
mariculture
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Tools - A Cultural Adaption
• The first tools used in hunting were simple clubs - tree
limbs that were thick and heavy
at one end.
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Agric Practices and Production
• Humans also harvested
shell fish, trapped fish (by
cutting off small patches from
the open sea), and invented
tools to catch fish, including
• Later the use of bone and
harpoons, hooks, and baskets.
stone and the development
of spears made hunting on
 Using tools and fire,
land more effective.
human communities
• Traps allowed hunters to
altered their
environments, which
roam a larger area and rehelped to establish more
duce the “wait time” for prey.
reliable food supplies.
• The control of fire offered
new opportunities.
• Less than 2 percent of the
US workforce is involved in
agricultural production.
• In the US total agricultural
production is at an all-time
high, but the proportion of the
labor force in agriculture is at
an all-time low.
• This sharp contrast in
agricultural practices
constitutes one of the most
fundamental differences
between the more developed
and less developed
countries of the world.
 The drive toward economic
efficiency has meant that
the average size of farms
(acres in production) in the
US has been growing,
regardless of the kind of
agricultural good produced.
 The mechanized, highly
productive American
farm contrasts with the
less productive and
largly subsistence farm
found in much of the
world.
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Images of
Agricultural
Practice
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Hunters and Gatherers
In order to survive people need food and water.
Earliest humans had to search their surroundings for
their daily needs: gathering, hunting and fishing
Hunters and gatherers lived in small groups.
The men hunted game or fished, and the women
collected berries, nuts, and roots (based on evidence from
archaeology and anthropology).
The group traveled frequently (wanderers/nomads). They
established new home bases or camps in areas
where food, water and shelter was adequate.
The direction and frequency of migration depended
on the movement of game and the seasonal growth of
plants at various locations. (This eventually lead to awareness of natural cycles and planning.)
Abundance in place reduced the need to wander.
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Contemporary Hunting
and Gathering
Early Agricultural Regions
 Current estimates put
c.250,000 people (out of 7
billion) still surviving by
hunting and gathering.
 Contemporary hunting
and gathering societies
are isolated groups living
on the periphery of world
settlement, but they provide insight into human
customs that prevailed in
prehistoric times, before
the invention of agriculture.
What accounts for this distribution?
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World
Climates
Köppen Climate Classification
System groups the world’s climates
on the basis of temp. and precip.
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Climate and Agriculture
Climate provides an insight into the location of
agricultural regions.
 Note areas having natural favorable conditions of average
temperature, seasonality, and precipitation.
 To this we add landforms and soil development.
 People’s perceptions of local conditions influenced the
agricultural movement.
Wladimir Köppen,
an Austrian botanist,
developed it as a
means to
categorize natural
vegetation.
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Map of Agriculture
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World Agricultural Regions
INSERT FIGURE 11.18
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Asia and Africa: 75% of labor force
works in agriculture
North America: less than 2% of
labor force works in agriculture
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Ancient Hearths and Current
Production Areas
Agriculture began with the domestication of plants.
Plant domestication was a gradual process
Agricultural Hearths
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Agriculture is Invented
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Vegetative Planting Hearths
 Geographer Carl Sauer postulated that the trials and
errors necessary to establish agriculture and settle in
one place would occur in lands of plenty.
– He suggested that Southeast and South Asia may
have been where the first tropical plant domestication
occurred, more than 14,000 years ago.
– The earliest form of plant cultivation was vegetative
planting, direct cloning from existing plants, such as
cutting stems and dividing roots.
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Location of First Vegetative Planting
• Sauer believed that vegetative planting probably originated in SE Asia because the
region’s diversity of climate
and topography encouraged
plants suitable for dividing.
• Also, the people obtained
food primarily by fishing, not
hunting and gathering, so they
may have been more sedentary and able to devote more
attention to growing plants.
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First Agricultural Revolution
The cultivation of seed crops marked the
beginning of what has been called the
First Agricultural Revolution.
Other early hearths of vegetative planting
also may have emerged independently in
West Africa and northwestern South America.
The first plants domesticated in
SE Asia probably included roots
such as the taro and yam, and
tree crops such as the banana
and palm.
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– Seed crops: plants that are reproduced by collecting
and cultivating seeds.
– The view now is that the first domestication of seed
plants took place in the Fertile Crescent of SW Asia
(Mesopotamia).
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Diffusion of Seed Agriculture
Seed Agriculture Hearths
 Seed agriculture diffused from
SW Asia across Europe and
through North Africa.
 Greece, Crete, and Cyprus
display the earliest evidence of
seed agriculture in Europe.
 Seed agriculture also diffused
eastward from Southwest Asia
to northwestern India and the
Indus River plain.
 Various domesticated plants
and animals were brought from
Southwest Asia, although other
plants, such as cotton and rice,
arrived in India from different
hearths.
Fertile
Crescent
From the northern China
hearth, millet diffused to S. Asia
and SE Asia.
Rice has an unknown hearth.
Sauer identified a 3rd independent hearth in Ethiopia, where
millet and sorghum were domesticated early (but argued that
agricultural advances in Ethiopia did not
diffuse widely to other locations).
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Diffusion of Seed Agriculture in
the Western Hemisphere
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Domestication of Animals
 Two independent seed agriculture hearths
originated in the Western Hemisphere:
southern Mexico and northern Peru.
• Agricultural practices diffused to other
parts of the Western Hemisphere.
• That agriculture had multiple origins
means that, from earliest times, people
have produced food in distinctive ways in
different regions.
• This diversity derives from a unique
legacy of wild plants, climatic conditions,
and cultural preferences in each region.
• Some scholars believe that animal domestication
began earlier than plant cultivation, but others argue that
animal domestication began as recently as 8000 years
ago—well after crop agriculture.
• The advantages of animal domestication - their use as
beasts of burden, as a source of meat, and as providers of milk -
stimulated the rapid diffusion of this idea and gave
the sedentary farmers of SW Asia and elsewhere a new
measure of security.
• Only five domesticated mammals are important
throughout the world:
 Improved communications in recent centuries
have encouraged the diffusion of some plants
to varied locations around the world.
 the cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse.
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Subsistence vs.
Commercial Agriculture
Regional and Local Change
 Subsistence agriculture is the production of food primarily for consumption by the farmer’s family.
 Commercial agriculture is the production of food primarily for sale.
• Shifts from subsistence agriculture to commercial
agriculture have had dramatic impacts on rural life.
• Dramatic increases in the production of export crops
have occurred at the expense of crop production for
local consumption.
This distinguishes agriculture in less developed
countries from more developed countries.
• Environmental, economic, and social changes have
affected local rural communities.
 Five principal features distinguish
commercial from subsistence agriculture:
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–
–
–
–
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purpose of farming
percentage of farmers in the labor force
use of machinery
farm size
relationship of farming to other businesses.
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Subsistence Agriculture
Extensive Subsistence Agriculture
 Shifting cultivation: farmers move from place to place in
search of better land.
– Found primarily in tropical and subtropical zones, where
traditional farmers had to abandon plots of land after the
soil became infertile.
– Slash-and-burn agriculture: farmers use tools (machetes
and knives) to slash down trees and tall vegetation, and
then burn the vegetation on the ground. A layer of ash from
the fire settles on the ground and contributes to the soil’s
fertility.
There are two chief types of subsistence agriculture:
1. Extensive subsistence agriculture
• Large areas of land
• Minimal labor input per acre
• Product per land unit and population densities are
low
2. Intensive subsistence agriculture
• Cultivation of small land holdings
• Great amounts of labor per acre
• Yields per unit area and population densities are
both high
Subsistence agriculture is returning in parts of the world where
farmers feel production for the global market has not benefited
them financially or culturally.
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Extensive
Subsistence
Agriculture
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Extensive Subsistence
Agriculture
Nomadic herding
Shifting cultivation
– Warm wet tropical climates
– Plots are cleared and burned, then cultivated until
fertility is lost, after which cropping shifts to a newly
prepared site
– Called “swidden” or “slash-and-burn”
– Less than 3% of world’s people engaged in this type
of cultivation
– Highly efficient cultural adaptation where land is
abundant in relation to population and levels of
technology and capital availability are low
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– Wandering but controlled movement of
livestock solely dependent on natural forage
– Most extensive type of land use system
(requires greatest amount of land area per
person sustained)
– Animals provide a variety of products for
food, clothing, shelter and fuel
– Nomadic movement is tied to sparse and
seasonal rainfall or cold temperatures as
well as quality and quantity of forage
 Transhumance: seasonal movement to
exploit locally varying pasture conditions.
It is on the decline.
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Intensive Subsistence
Agriculture
• Involves about 45% of world’s people.
• Small-plot production of grains as
rice, wheat, maize, or millet
– The warm, moist districts of monsoon
Asia are well-suited to rice production
– The cooler and drier portions of Asia
produce wheat, millet and upland rice.
• Intensive use of fertilizers, mostly
animal manure
• Promise of high yields in good years
• Polyculture (variety of crops) is practiced
for food security and dietary custom
• Urban agriculture is rapidly growing
activity
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