"Roots" of Agriculture
Farming for your family and local area.
What is subsistence farming?
Having both plants and animals on your farm.
What is mixed crop and livestock faming?
This model explains how as you travel further from the city center different types of farming is done. This is due to food preservation and transportation costs.
What is the Von Thunen Model?
This use of land involves farming on higher priced land close to market center. Higher yield is gained through more workers and more technology.
What is intensive farming?
This was the process, started in the early 1500s, when the "Old World" first began trading with the "New World"
The Columbian Exchange
This was marked by the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and GMOs.
What is the Green Revolution?
Moving farm land from place to place to farm in order to keep the soil nourished.
What is shifting cultivation or slash and burn farming.
The process from when a seed is sown to a consumer buying the food.
What is a commodity chain?
This type of farming uses lower priced land and gains higher yield by using a lot of land.
What is extensive farming?
When did the Second Agricultural Revolution take place?
1750-1800
This was the origin of farming, it was marked by the first domestication of plants and animals.
What is the First Agricultural Revolution?
Fruits and vegetables are sold fresh to consumers, but most are sold to large processors for canning or freezing for profit.
What is market gardening/commercial gardening/truck farming?
Farming that is focused on one crop. This can lead to a loss of biodiversity in an area.
What is monoculture or monocropping?
This measuring system was used in England where the plots of land were irregular shapes. It uses physical features of the land to create plot boundaries.
What is metes and bounds?
This type of agriculture allows for crops to be planted on steep mountainsides, where they otherwise would not be able to grow.
Terrace farming
This type of farming puts a focus on using little to no pesticides or herbicides.
What is organic farming?
Following herds of livestock from place to place.
What is pastoral nomadism or nomadic herding?
As a country develops, and adapts to using machines on farms, this gender's participation in agriculture increases.
What is a male?
The French used this system which created even rectangles of land for farms usually along a source of water.
What is the French long lot system?
The phenomenon by which salt build up in soil reaches the point where soil loses nourishment and plants suffer.
What is soil salinization?
The farming of fish. Much is done in the Pacific Ocean.
What is aquaculture?
This is the term for large commercial farms that specialize in one or two crops. These are common in developing countries, especially in tropical regions.
What are plantations?
This is used to determine farmers willingness to pay for land at various distances from the market center.
What is the bid-rent curve/theory?
Why does it makes sense that livestock should be in the outermost ring on the Von Thunen model?
Cattle can be walked to market because they are non-perishable (while they are alive)
Cattle can be walked to market to mitigate the otherwise expensive transportation costs when one is far from the city center
Cattle need large plots of land to graze, and land is cheaper the farther it is from the city center.
Name TWO assumptions that Von Thunen held when designing his model?
All land is flat and uniform
There is one central market
All land has equal access to market (no barriers)
Farmers want to maximize their profits
This agricultural hearth is where potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers originated.
This type of argiculture includes crops such as grapes, olives and figs. California, Chile and Southern Europe are all regions with climates that allow for the practice this type of agriculture
What is Mediterranean?
How has the Green Revolution affected gender roles in agriculture?
In many developing countries PRIOR to the Green Revolution, women were in charge of the farming labor.
The development of new technologies and techniques were communicated to male heads of households.
Women are excluded from learning or having decision making power due to their lack of economic and social equality. This contributes to further gender inequality.
The rising demand for commercial agriculture, cattle grazing, and in the logging industry has led to this practice in places like the Amazon, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Deforestation
What is a negative effect of the use of irrigation in agricultural practices?
The use of pesticides and herbicides can cause runoff than can contaminate the soil, air, or water sources.