Introduction to Agriculture

1.agrarian: used to describe the way of life that is deeply embedded in the demands of agricultural production

2.Agriculture: the deliberate modification of the Earth's surface through the cultivation of plants and rearing of animals to obtain sustenance or economic grain.

3.Banana: The......from Central America came from SE Asia.

4.Barter: A .... economy is typical in subsistence communities.

5.Beans and Cotton: In Latin America you have ..... in Mexico and Potato in Peru.

6.Columbian Exchange: the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New and Old Worlds.

7.Commercial agriculture: produces goods for sale in the city or on the international market.

8.Corn: ..... also from Mexico and Peru.

9.Corn (maize): ......of the American belt diffused from Central America and Southern Mexico. Later the Portuguese brought it across the Atlantic to Africa.

10.Crop Rotation: moving crops from one field to another allowing for the fields to rest.

11.Cultural Theorists: ........believe human behavior is responsible. The preference for living in a fixed place rather than as nomads led to hunters/gatherers to build permanent settlements.

12.Enclosure system(Enclosure Act): The governments of Europe played a role by passing laws. For example Great Britain's Enclosure act which encouraged consolidation of fields into large single-owner landholdings. This increased the number of individual and independent farmers. Farm sizes increased and land was fenced in.

13.Environmental Theorists: ...... point to coinciding of the 1st domestication of crops and animals with climate change approximately 10,0000 years ago (marking the end of the last ice age).

14.Extensive Agriculture: expends less labor and capital per unit of land.

15.First Agricultural Revolution: Occurred in the Fertile Crescent where the Tigris and Euphrates flow. Grain crops (wheat/barley) grow well in SW Asia. perhaps as early as 12,000 years ago.

16.Horse Collar: you could now use a horse to plow your fields instead of oxen.

17.Intensive Agriculture: uses much labor and capital to increase productivity per unit of land. The yields per unit area and population densities are high. You have a small parcel of land and maximum crop production. It can be a result of land costs, you end up with fierce population pressures and less arable land.

18.Market Gardening: smaller scale farming of fruits/vegetables/flowers in which the producer sells to the local community and restaurant

19.Men: hunted game and fish.

20.Millet and rice: ...... may have domesticated independently from East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

21.Mixed Crop(Livestock systems): multiple cops on the same land. Livestock systems include feed lots.

22.nomadic herding: this is actually the most extensive type of land use system. It requires the greatest amount of land area per person sustained. Nomadic herding is moving animals from place to place in search of grazing land. This is typically found in arid regions and areas not suitable for crops.

23.Pastoral nomadism: is a form of extensive subsistence agriculture.

Animal herds are moved from one forage area to another in a cyclical pattern of migration.

24.Plant: The world's earliest centers of .... domestication are: SE Asia, SW Asia, Central America, Mesoamerica, West Africa.

25.Plantation Agriculture: large scale agriculture where crops are grown for widespread commercial sale

26.Potato (white): ...... of Ireland and Idaho came from the Andean highlands. It was brought to Europe in the 1600's.

27.private: Also the feudal landholding system was breaking down yielding to a new agrarian system based not on service to the lord but on the emerging system of .... property relations.

28.Ranching: the practice of raising livestock for meat, wool, etc..

29.Rice: .....is now thought to be domesticated in East Asia More than 10,000 years ago along the Yangtze in eastern China, millet along the yellow River.

30.Root Crops: using the roots or cuttings to grow plants

31.Second Agricultural Revolution: Began in the late Middle Ages and included changes that brought more efficiency to farming during the 17th and 18th centuries.

For the Industrial revolution to take place a 2nd agricultural revolution had to take place; a movement beyond subsistence agriculture to generate surpluses to feed thousands of people working in factories.

Although there is disagreement as to when the 2nd revolution began most historians agree that it did not occur everywhere at the same time. The apex coincided historically and geographically with the Industrial Revolution in England and Western Europe.

32.Seed Crops: using seeds to grow the plants

33.shifting cultivation: found primarily in tropical and subtropical zones. Farmers will clear land and plant on it. Usually this is forest land and it is cleared by slash and burn agriculture (cutting down and burning). Because the soil no longer has the nutrients it had from the forest vegetation the soil quickly loses nutrients. Farmers will then move to another parcel of land.

Also called slash-and-burn, patch, or milpa.

34.Sorghum: .......in central Africa 8,000 years ago, yams earlier.

35.South England: Seed crops took 4,000 years for it to reach ________ from the Middle East.

36.subsistence agriculturalists: Soil quality is often marginal.

They generally lack the tools and technology that developed countries have had for nearly 100 years.

It is difficult for them to accumulate the capital that would allow for an improvement in the standard of living.

Poor countries must often turn to cash crops for export, leaving them without the food production needed to sustain their own population.

Problems faced by:

37.Subsistence agriculture: is practiced by families and villages when they raise only enough animals and crops to feed themselves. There is very little trade.

38.Transhumance: is a form of pastoral nomadism wherein stock is moved to the lowlands in the winter and to the highlands in the summer (vertical nomadism). It is found in the mountainous areas of the middle latitudes (Alps, Pyrenees) It involves either vertical movement from mountains to valleys or horizontal movement between established lowland grazing areas to reach pastures temporarily lush from seasonal rains.

39.Women: ......played a crucial role because they were engaged in the collection of plant resources.

Categories of Economic Activity

1.accessible: Secondary needs to be ..... to the resource, a source of energy, the market, and an appropriate labor force.

2.close: Primary must be located .... to the resource.

3.cluster: Quinary economic activities tend to ......

-need for similar skills in the workforce

-similar needs for ancillary industries

-medical services need labs/support industry

-availability of investment capital

4.Infrastructure: Economic activities are all tied together by __________ (transportation and communication).

5.Primary: Primary-Products closest to the ground; the harvest or extraction. Ex: agriculture, ranching, hunting/gathering, fishing, forestry, mining/quarrying

6.proximity: ...... to the market is the most important locational factor for tertiary activities

7.Quaternary: Information services; exchange of money/goods, information

8.Quinary: high level decision making. Ex: research, higher education, executive decision making

9.Secondary: take the primary product and manufacture it; add value.

10.suffers: If something becomes inoperable and the economy .... because of it, you are looking at infrastructure.

11.telecommunications: Access to good .....infrastructure and a suitable work force is important for quaternary.

12.Tertiary: part of the service industry connecting producers and consumers and facilitating commerce/trade

Environmental Consequences of Agricultural Practices

1.animal waste: a problem caused by the presence of a lot of animals

2.aquifer depletion: the removal of groundwater more rapidly than it can be recharged by precipitation or melting snow

3.deforestation: The removal of trees faster than forests can replace themselves.

4.Desertification: The process by which fertile land becomes desert,typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or agriculture.

5.Land degradation: Occurs when natural or human-induced processes decrease the future ability of land to support crops, livestock, or wild species.

6.overfishing: Removing more fish from the oceans than can be naturally produced

7.overgrazing: Destruction of vegetation caused by too many grazing animals consuming the plants in a particular area so they cannot recover

8.Pesticides: Chemicals that kill crop-destroying organisms, leak into soil with fertilizer

9.Salinization: evaporated water leaves behind salts that can poison the soil

10.soil degradation: Damage to soil - for example, as a result of deforestation or the removal of topsoil from bare land by water and wind erosion.

11.Soil Erosion: Movement of soil components, especially topsoil, from one place to another, usually by wind, flowing water, or both. This natural process can be greatly accelerated by human activities that remove vegetation from soil.

Major Agriculture types and Settlement Patterns

1.Aquaculture: The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions

2.Cash Cropping: dispersed settlement patterns around it. One isolated farmhouse followed by large plots of land for farming and then another isolated house. You may also see linear settlement patterns (associated with long lots) that come out from a river source or road as all farmers need access to the road or river.

3.Fishing: associated with a nucleated settlement as the fishermen live in the nearby village.

4.Forestry: managing and replenishing timber has become the standard practice in regions of the Temperate zones, but not in the tropics, where slow-growing hardwood forests are rapidly being destroyed.

5.Mixed Farming: It carries the least risk. North American and European growers use their land "intensively"; Asian and Latin American farmers work their land "extensively".

The settlement pattern associated with it would be dependent on where you live or if it were for commercial or subsistence agriculture.

6.Monoculture: The settlement patterns associated with it are most likely to be dispersed or linear as most of these farms will be focusing on one major crop for export (a cash crop).

7.Nucleated: most common settlement pattern in the world

8.Pastoralism: The settlement patterns associated with it are nucleated and round/rundling as the men move about with the animals and the women/children stay behind.

9.Plantation Agriculture: will have a dispersed settlement pattern as you will see large homes isolated from one another by vast amounts of farmland.

10.Subsistence Agriculture: Around the world most villages will have a nucleated/clustered settlement pattern

Physical Geography

1.Center Pivot irrigation: is easy to spot due to the giant moving sprinklers and tell-tale circular field patterns easily viewable from above.

2.Climate: Overall weather in an area over a long period of time

3.Debt for nature swap: Forgiveness of international debt in exchange for nature protection in developing countries

Lending countries agree to eliminate a portion of debt if a borrowing country agrees to preserve their natural environment

-OR-

Environmental organizations agree to pay a portion of debt if a borrowing country agrees to preserve their natural environment

Through these agreements, governments are able to write off a proportion of their foreign held debt and instead direct payments into funds to support domestic conservation initiatives. Since 1987, debt-for-nature-swaps have generated over US$1 billion for conservation in developing countries.

4.Deforestation: Slash-and-burn

"Swidden"

The removal of trees faster than forests can replace themselves.

5.Desertification: The process by which fertile land becomes desert,typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or agriculture.

6.Double cropping: Harvesting two crops on the same field in a given year

It allows land to be more productive. Farmers can grow two crops instead of one. It is important to grow crops that compliment each other so that they use different minerals in the soil. It can help farmers grow more food for themselves or to sell. It also reduces the acreage of fields required for agriculture. complimentary crops can actually improve soil if crop #1 can replenish nutrients used by crop #2. However, double cropping has the potential to exhaust soil quickly if not done properly.

7.Draining wetlands: Loss of wetland habitats and associated species

8.Drip and Center Pivot: These two irrigation systems are most associated with commercial agriculture and are found in more developed countries.

9.Drip Irrigation: involves running small hoses along the ground that seep water at the base of crops. Very little evaporation occurs with it but it is expensive.

10.Environmental modification: Humans modify their environment to grow and raise food

11.Intertillage: Planting between rows of crop plants already prepared for the growth of crops.

12.Irrigation: A way of supplying water to an area of land

13.Ivory Coast: country that produces cacao for chocolate

14.Monoculture: Countries growing one dominant cash crop

Monoculture keeps countries are:

Less developed

Experience financial instability

Periphery

15.Mozambique: Country that produces cotton

16.Sri Lanka: country that produces tea

17.Subsistence irrigation: usually involves physically carrying water in buckets or using rudimentary canals.

18.Sustainable Yield: Highest rate at which a renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply

19.Terraced farming: found in mountainous areas where very little flat land exists

Create fields on steep terrain

Gravity irrigation

Reduced soil run off

Physically demanding labor

Rural Settlement Patterns and Vernacular Housing Types

.4-over-4 house: 1 rooms deep: 4 upstairs, 4 downstairs. Constructed from locally quarried stone or brick.

The door upstairs was probably to get bedroom feather mattresses out for spring cleaning.

2.Agricultural landscape: In the Eastern Hemisphere fragmented farms are the rule

Farmers live in farm villages or hamlets

Fields are situated at varying distances and directions from the settlement

One farm can consist of one hundred or more separate parcels of land

In Asia and southern Europe individual plots may be roughly rectangular

Narrow strips are most common in Western and central Europe

3.Building Materials: Typically reflect what is locally available: they use the materials they have to build the houses.

Ex: wood, brick, stone, wattle (tightly woven sticks and poles plastered with mud), grass, and brush.

4.Charleston Single House: Known as a "single house" because of the single row of rooms in the front and back.

5.Checkerboard Pattern: landscape reflects the pattern of land ownership in much of the country. The U.S. adopted the rectangular survey system after the American revolution as part of the cadastral system known as township and range system. It was designed to facilitate the movement of non-Indians evenly across farmland in the interior of the United States.

6.Clustered Village: (aka Nucleated)-clusters around an intersection. Nucleated settlements are the most prevalent residential pattern in agricultural areas.

7.Dispersed Village: Land is intensively cultivated by machine, houses are far apart from each other. This is typical in Midwestern United States.

8.Dogon Village: These homes are located on stone cliffs. The population of 300,000 is most heavily concentrated on the escarpment called the Cliffs of Bandiagara.

The culture is complex; the Dagon home is not a particular building but a series of stages which includes several buildings. The home is related to the development of the individual. For example the Dagon wife stays with her father until her 3rd child. It is a hierarchical system in which family is spread over several houses until one achieves status required to own their own home.

9.Dogtrot House: AKA "breezeway" house, dog-run, possum-trot. It is found in poorer rural areas. It originated in the Southern Appalachian mountain region. It is distinguishable by an open breezeway through the center of the house off of which opens to the rooms; this allows for cross ventilation.

10.Fragmentation: over time means that one farmer has widely scattered plots of land.

11.Garrison House:

The second floor overhang is a relic of urban house design in medieval Europe which allowed for more walking space on the street.

12.Georgian house:

Largest of the NE home types. It is a full 2 story structure with 4-5 rooms on each floor. Has up to 10 rooms with a lobby entrance and symmetric gabled roof.

13.Grid Village: More modern, planned. Found especially in areas with Spanish influence.

14.Housing Hearths: New England

Middle Atlantic

Tidewater South

These are all....in the US.

15.Linear Village: found in low lying areas along rivers or levees

Villages may be oriented along waterways (rivers/levees or roads)

16.Long-lot farms: A landholding consisting of a long, narrow unit-block stretching back from a road, river, or canal

Typical in the Canadian maritimes, parts of Quebec, and parts of Texas.

Landholding units are very elongated in order for a large number of owners to have access to a valuable resource (most often water). It divided land into narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals. It was introduced to the new world by Europeans and can be found in Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States.

It is typical of French settled areas (Canadian Maritimes, parts of Quebec, Louisiana, and Texas).

17.Maladaptive Diffusion: Diffusion of an idea or innovation that is not suitable for the environment it diffused to.

It has negative side effects and does not work in the region it diffused to. It is not practical in the area it diffused.

18.Masai: In Kenya .Wattle and Daub is an ancient construction technique. There are 2 stages to construction. First you have interwoven branches or rods which form a tight lattice. Then it is covered with daub. Daub is a plaster-like mixture of mud, plant fibers and animal dung. The animal dung helps keep the termites away. A thicket of thorn branches is put around the perimeter to keep out predators such as hyenas.

Women are the builders. The structure needs constant maintenance especially in the rainy season.

19.Metes and Bounds: This system was brought to North America by early colonists. The land boundary descriptions employing landmarks, directions, and distances. It was adopted along the eastern seaboard. Natural features were used to demarcate irregular parcels of land.

The problem is that landmarks are not always permanent and can lead to legal disputes.

It is found along the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Geography, west into Kentucky and Tennessee and parts of the lower Mississippi River Valley.

20.Middle Atlantic: Dogtrot house

21.Middle Atlantic: 4-over 4 house

22.Middle Atlantic: Pennsylvania Dutch

23.Middle Atlantic: Classic I house

24.Modern: reflects the advanced technology, practicality, comfort, affluence, suburbanization. This is most common in the United States and your more developed countries.

25.Modernized Traditional: materials and layout have been changed. For example there might now be multiple bathrooms, two car garage, etc)

26.Modified Traditional: new building materials are used (ex: tin room, windows, door); there is no change to the original structure or layout of the house.

27.New England: Upright.Wing House

28.New England: Georgian style NE large house

29.New England: Saltbox House

30.New England: Garrison House

31.Nias Island: island on the west coast of Sumatera, Indonesia. These are commercial villages in which people live close together. It is built on stilts to protect from the water. Open sides for air flow.

32.Pennsylvania Dutch: combines animal shelter with grain storage and threshing (separate grain from plants) functions. Was carried inland to South Appalachia and Northern Ontario.

33.Primogeniture: Practice in which all land passes to the oldest son. The result is larger plots of land. This is common in Northern Europe and areas of Northern European Colonization (Americas, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand)

34.Railroad Apartments: In NYC. are laid out the same way; one long hallway with rooms off to the side.

The double shotgun requires less land per living unit than singles and is used extensively in poor areas

35.Ranch House: It evolved in California in the 1920's. It diffused eastward (first through the Sunbelt, then to other regions). It was designed for balmy climates and outdoor living. The image of it took precedence over the practicality of it. It is not suitable for the harsh eastern climates. Maladaptive diffusion

36.Rectangular Survey System: The township and range system imposed a rectangular grid on the landscape.

The surveying is based on baselines and meridians. It is found in the interior portions of the United States.

37.Round Village: Circular/rundling-has a central cattle corral.

38.Saltbox House:

Has an asymmetrical gable roof covering a shed or lean-to addition to a house giving it extra room on the 1st floor.

(A lean-to is a structure added to an existing building with rafters "leaning" against another wall)

39.Shotgun Cottages: The name comes from the idea that if you shot a shotgun through the front door it would pass through each room and then out the back door.

These homes are typical in areas that have scarce land. They are simple and inexpensive. They were slave quarters and freedmen's homes found in the South.

40.Sod Farm House: In Iceland. There are no trees so they use sod. This is similar to the sod house frontier of North America. Plains and prairies lack trees so you can't build a log cabin.

41.Solar Powered TV Hut: an example of progression as there is some functional differentiation in buildings in Niger.

42.Stone/Cement House: houses in Armenia

43.Stone House: In Nepal there are 2 types of stone masonry houses; traditional oval and rectangular.

44.Survey System(Cadastral): These are land division systems.

45.Taos Pueblo: Timber is scarce and it rains less than 10 inches a year so mud is ideal (since rain is the enemy of mud). The walls are thick and the wall heights are low. Pine polls called vigas are used as rafters to hold up the roof.

The doors are a modification. The first floor had no entrance (for defensive reasons) and they used ladders which led to the roof then internal ladders to get down.

46.Tidewater South: Charleston single house

47.Tidewater South: Shotgun Cottages

48.Traditional I house: The "I' house was coined by cultural geographer Fred Kniffen (same guy who made the map). It was called the "I" house because it is common in "I" states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa) not that it originated there.

49.Unchanged Traditional: the layout, construction, and appearance have not been significantly altered by external influences. It remains unchanged; it has not been significantly altered by outside influences in the last 100 years. It can however change internally due to cultural changes. This is most common in your isolated communities in the less developed parts of the world.

50.Upright-and-wing house: Another adaption to the NE home. It includes variations in the location of the front entrance, chimney, and size of the wing relative to the main lobby.

51.Uros Reed dwelling: In Lake Titicaca, Peru. This is using the tatora reed (of the papaya family). The residents here live on a floating island made of bundled reeds. It was created to prevent attacks by the Incas and Collas. It was built upon an approximately 20-40 inch shallow lake.

52.Vernacular architecture: Culturally and climatically relevant architecture using locally available materials and traditional building techniques.

53.Walled Village: Walled (and surrounded by moats) for protection

54.Yurt: It appears solid but is actually portable and light. It can be disassembled/dismantled in 30 minutes. It is always pitched facing south so sunlight from the smoke hole in the roof acts as a sundial. Internally it is one large space but it has visible demarcation lines of etiquette; women to the west, guests to the east, and the back mat is for men.

World Agriculture

1.Commercial Grain farming: in US/Canada, Eastern Europe in the South, North Central Asia

2.Dairying: spans Midwestern US, and Northeastern US. includes UK, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, and smaller portions of Northwest Europe

3.Diversified Tropical Agriculture chiefly plantation: In Mexico and Caribbean, coastline of Andes, in spots of Africa, Madagascar

4.Fruit, Truck, and Specialized Crops: located in Eastern US, spotted in Western US, Europe and Central Asia

5.Intensive Subsistence Farming--rice: In Eastern India, China, and Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific

6.Intensive Subsistence Farming wheat and other crops: Western India, Northern China, Southeast Asia, Small portion in Middle East

7.Livestock Ranching: most of Western US, South Brazil and South America, in Africa, and Australia, and New Zealand, in Central Asia

8.Mediterranean Agriculture: On Mediterranean Coastline, small portion in Australia

9.Mixed Livestock and Crop Farming: non coastal Eastern US, most of Europe, in southern regions of Africa and South America, and eastern portions on Eastern Asia

10.Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Herding: in Western China, Sahara, and Horn of Africa, Middle East, and near North Pole

11.Non-Agricultural Areas,: Canada, Andes Mountains, Himalayas, in Central Australia, and near poles and Antarctica

12.Rudimentary Sedentary Cultivation: along Andes Mountains, In small spots in Africa and Southeast Asia and Mexico,

13.Shifting Cultivation: Most of Brazil and Amazon Rain forest, in Central America, most of sub-Saharan Africa

14.Subsistence Crop and Livestock Farming: In Mexico, Southern Brazil, Turkey, and Mongolia and near Greece

Agribusiness and Commodity Chains

1.Agribusiness: a trend where large corporations buy and control many different steps in a food processing industry

an encompassing term for business that provides a vast array of goods and services to support the agricultural industry is a system; it is a set of economic and political relationships that organize food production from the development of the seed to the retailing and consumption of the agricultural product.

2.Commercial Agriculture: Large-scale farming and ranching operations that employ vast land bases, large mechanized equipment, factory-type labor forces, and the latest technology.

3.commodity chain: a network of labor and production processes beginning with the extraction or production of raw materials and ending with the delivery of a finished commodity.

4.corporations: An effect of agribusiness and commercial agriculture is that family farms are contracted out to...

5.food chain: is composed of 5 connected sections:

Inputs

Production

Processing

Distribution

Consumption

is a specific type of commodity chain

6.Global Supply Chain: consists of the continuous buying and selling of goods and services. The supply chain covers all the steps it to get a good/service from the supplier to the consumer.

7.market: Farmers have a guaranteed... and assured price as long as their product is uniform and meet the delivery timeline of the processors due to agribusiness and commercial agriculture.

8.transportation, refrigeration: what allowed agribusiness/corporate farming to develop?

9.urban: Poor farmers can't afford the investment needed for crops and can't keep up and many times they leave rural to ...areas.

10.Vertical Coordination: Blending of primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary economic activities. Traditionally business relations were on win/lose terms. Relationships were constructed as competitive with each company seeking to buy as cheaply and sell as expensively as possible. Now companies replace small farms and control all aspects of the supply chain.

Now there is a market pull as the consumer and what the market wants determines the inputs. There is vertical coordination, it is long term, and fast adjustments. Also today there is a global production chain.

Agricultural Technology and Luxury Crops

1.Aquaculture: the cultivation of seafood

2.Economies of Scale: The more units you produce, the cheaper each unit costs to produce

3.Factory Farms: focus on raising the maximum number of animals possible on a given piece of land. A large, industrial operation that raises large numbers of animals for food. Over 99% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised in these, which focus on profit and efficiency at the expense of animal welfare.

4.Feedlot: animals are fed so that they can recover from their transportation from farm/ranch with the goal of reaching the maximum weight possible before being sold. they produce high levels of animal waste and stink like you can't imagine.

5.Horticulture (and Fruit Farming): intensively cultured, high-value luxury crops

food crops, flowers and ornamental plants

Nutrition and aesthetics

the science and art of producing, improving, marketing, and using fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ornamental plants.

6.Livestock Ranching (cattle ranching): Extensive

Distribution

Western USA/Canada (cattle)

Brazil/Argentina (cattle)

South Africa (goats/sheep)

Central Asia (sheep/goats)

Australia (sheep/cattle)

7.Luxury Crops: High value cash crops not part of a staple diet

8.Market Gardening: Fruits, vegetables, flowers

small scale farms that sell to local consumers

produces a large diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, during a single growing season. Primarily, labor is done manually although it is a form of commercial agriculture.

9.Mediterranean Agriculture: . Figs, dates, and almonds also thrive in Mediterranean climates. These crops need warmer temperatures year round and less rain than crops such as rice or corn.

10.Truck Farms: Fruits mainly

Year round growing season

large scale commercial farms for long distance consumers

grow mostly fruit that need warmth and cannot tolerate frost. Citrus fruits and some berries fall into this category.

Third Agricultural Revolution

1.3rd Agricultural Revolution: began in the late 19th century and gained momentum throughout the 20th Century (1950's onward)

2.Agricultural Industrialization: the process whereby the farm has moved from being the centerpiece of agricultural production to being part of an integrated multilevel (or vertically organized) industrial process that includes production, storage, processing, distribution, marketing, and retailing.

3.Chemical farming: became widespread in the 1950's in the United States then diffused to Europe in 1960 and the periphery in 1970.

the application of synthetic fertilizers to the soil such as herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides

4.Contract farming: an agreement between farmers and processing and/or marketing firms for the supply and purchase of agricultural products by way of legal agreements.

5.Globally widespread food manufacturing: adding value to agricultural products through processing, canning, refining, packaging, packing

6.Green Revolution: a term coined in the late 1960's to refer to the changes in agricultural production with so-called miracle seeds (high yield varieties), especially wheat and rice. The hope was that it would increase production in the developing world.

7.High-yield seeds: These are seeds that were bred to respond to fertilizers and produce an increased amount of grain per acre planted.

8.Hybrid seeds: are created by cross pollinating two different but related plants in order to create a plant variety that would stand up to a farmers micro-climate (weather, soil, and predator insects) but the second generation of seeds will not yield the same amounts of seeds as the first generation, so farmers are dependent on the producer of these seeds

9.Mechanization: increased use of machines in agriculture

10.North America: Each of the 3 development phases began in ....

Issues and Locations of Food Production

1.Economies of Scale: How does cost of production influence profitability?

2.Enterprise Zone: land set aside by govts, usually city govts, to attract businesses. If a processing facility can get a low loan or low taxes, they might be persuaded to move to a certain town.

3.Famine: Cataclysmic food shortages with natural or human causes

4.Farm Crisis: An event or situation that dramatically decreases farm profits

5.Government Policies: These enable subsidies that can influence location of crops and food production facilities.

6.Malnutrition: A prolonged unbalanced diet does not allow your body to receive proper nutrition

7.Market: Food processing facility must be located near to the ....

8.profits: Generally speaking, farmers in MDCs can grow any crop the want. These farmers are commercial farmers looking to maximize their this.

9.Protective Tariff: A tax on imported goods that raises the price of imports so people will buy domestic goods

10.Stabilize: Ag subsidies are designed so that the gov't can influence crop production and .... the price of crops.

11.Subsidies: A form of gov't sponsored financial aid to support an industry, program, etc.

12.Transportation: needs to be cheap so that it will be easier to move crops, influences location

13.USDA Farm Bill: 85% of the money in the Farm Bill actually goes to food stamps to generate crop demand.

The Federal Land Bank and the Farm Service Agency give low interest loans to farmers to buy land or to help with production costs

When a farmer purchases a farm, they go to the local USDA office and register their farm. The farmer gets a map of the farm from USDA with soil info on it that tells the farmer what they can and can't plant according to soil.

Farmers get paid money to NOT FARM land they own that is determined by the USDA to not be productive or a risk for environmental hazards such as runoff.

If farmers follow USDA guidelines, they get a guaranteed sale price of their product from the govt. A farmer can sell to a higher buyer if they find one.

USDA pays farmers to put up storage facilities to improve quality of product. These storage facilities could cost a farmer up to $50,000.

Issues Related to Modern Agriculture

1.Africa: Continent that opposes GMOs for concerns over health problems, export problems, and increased dependence on the United States.

2.Antibiotics: GMOs reduce effectiveness of this and destroy the ecological balances of nature.

3.Aquaculture: There are concerns over:

Water pollution from fish waste

Transfer of disease to wild fish

Genetic damage to wild fish from escaped fish that have been genetically altered

This industry is the fastest-growing sector of the world food economy.

4.Biorevolution: The extension of scientific innovation such as genetic modifications and agricultural biotechnology to all plant and animal products.

5.Biotechnology: A form of technology that uses living organisms, usually genes, to modify products, to make or modify plants and animals, or to develop other microorganisms for specific purposes.

6.Eat Local Movements: Focus on producing and consuming food grown locally

Eating local means minimizing the distance between production and consumption.

Eating local helps preserve local and small-scale farmland.

Reduces fossil fuel consumption, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions.

Supports the local economy.

7.Europeans: They oppose GM crops as they feel they are not as nutritious.

8.Fair Trade: Giving farmers fair market prices for their products.

Provides a decent living wage and guarantees the right to organize.

The goal of this is to create safe working conditions, provides a decent living wage, and guarantees the right to organize. This is done through equitable and direct trade.

9.GMO: Genetically Modified Organism: is the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. The foreign genes may come from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans.

10.Organic Farming: Can benefit the environment but only have modest impacts on the majority of the world's people and places

Has little effect on the production of staple foods

Concerns over standards and sustainability

Pricing out of smaller farms due to subsidies favoring large farms

More diverse ecosystems due to lack of synthetic pesticides

No genetic modifications

Free of Pesticides

Free of antibiotics

Free of synthetic hormones

No artificial fertilizers

Must feed on completely organic crops

Can bring higher prices than non-GMO but is more costly to grow.

11.Regional appellation: Some foods are associated with a local or regional geographic name for the product.

These place-names bring higher prices at market. You can be sued for using this on a product not actually produced/created in that region due to international trade agreements.

12.Value-added specialty foods: A change in the physical state or form of the product (such as milling wheat into flour or making strawberries into jam).

The production of a product in a manner that enhances its value (such as organically produced products).

The physical segregation of an agricultural commodity or product in a manner that results in the enhancement of the value of that commodity or product (such as an identity preserved marketing system).

Food is processed on the farm and significantly increases in value and more money goes to the farmer.

Ex: wine, specialty cheeses, olive/nut oils, syrups, smoked/dried meats.