How are agricultural practices influenced by the physical environment and climatic conditions?
What is the difference between intensive and extensive farming, and what types of practices are involved with each?
How do specific agricultural practices shape different rural land-use patterns?
What are the different rural settlement patterns, and how are rural surveys conducted?
Where are the early hearths of the domestication of plants and animals?
How do patterns of diffusion, such as the Columbian Exchange, result in the global distribution of various plants and animals?
What is the relationship between new technology and increased food production in the second agricultural revolution?
What positive and negative consequences did the Green Revolution produce for both human populations and the environment?
How are agricultural production regions defined?
What is the difference between intensive and extensive agricultural practices?
Why are large-scale commercial agricultural operations replacing small family farms?
How do complex commodity chains link production and consumption of agricultural products?
How has technology increased economies of scale in the agricultural sector and the carrying capacity of the land?
How does Von Thunen's model help explain rural land use?
Why have some countries become highly dependent on on or more export commodities?
What are the main elements of global food distribution networks, and how are they affected by political relationships, infrastructure, and patterns of world trade?
What are some of the environmental and societal effects of agriculture?
What are the challenges of feeding a global population, and how is humanity trying to counter these challenges?
Why does the role of females in food production, distribution, and consumption vary throughout the world?
I can...
Explain the connection between physical geography and agricultural practices.
Identify different rural settlement patterns and methods of surveying rural settlements.
Identify major concepts of domestication of plants and animals.
Explain how plants and animals diffused globally.
Explain the advances and impacts of the second agricultural revolution.
Explain the consequences of the Green Revolution on food supply and the environment in the developing world.
Explain how economic forces influence agricultural practices.
Describe how the Von Thunen model is used to explain patterns of agricultural production at various scales.
Explain the interdependence among regions of agricultural production and consumption.
Explain how agricultural practices have environmental and societal consequences.
Explain challenges and debates related to the changing nature of contemporary agriculture and food-production practices.
Explain geographic variations in female roles in food production and consumption.
Standards
SS.Geog3.a.h - Assess how and why consumption of resources (e.g., petroleum, coal, electricity, steel, water, food) differs between developed and developing countries now and in the past.
SS.Geog5.b.h - Hypothesize how changes in human behavior (e.g., organic agriculture, Genetically Modified Organisms, ecotourism) can result in changes that have effects on a global scale.