GEG 100 ONLINE! Cultural Geography Outline of Chapter 8

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I. Two themes of this chapter: Agriculture and Globalization 

II. Agriculture

A. Three reason why we should study the geography of agriculture:

• much of Earth’s surface is in agriculture
• many people in developing world work in agriculture
• agriculture as cause for environmental change

B. Agriculture and food production not synonymous: growing non-food crops, hunting and gathering, etc.

C. Only about 2 % of Americans are farmers, but half of all families in Less Developed Countries are farmers

 

 III. Agricultural Revolutions

A. First Agricultural Revolution: Neolithic Era

1. first planting of crops and domestication of animals
2. source regions
3. innovations such as irrigation, terracing, fertilizer

B. Second Agricultural Revolution: Western Europe 1600s

1. technological change: crop rotation, instruments, later machines, fertilizers

C. Third Agricultural Revolution: Green Revolution post 1960s

1. hybrid grains for better yields
2. reliance on fertilizers
3. genetically engineered crops: promise and problems

IV. Factors Affecting the Geography of Agriculture

A. Climate and natural environment
B. Culture
C. Economic factors: von Thünen and market location

V. Production methods

A. labor intensive versus capital intensive
B. intensive land use versus extensive land use
C. commercial versus subsistence

 

D. sedentary versus nomadic

1. transhumance
2. shifting cultivation (slash and burn)

E. irrigated versus non-irrigated

F. different forms of land ownership:

• family farms,
• tenant farmers,
• sharecroppers,
• plantations,
• state-owned farms,
• garden plots, and
• agribusiness.

G. agribusiness and the globalization of agriculture

VI. Globalization

A. time-space convergence and the reduced friction of distance
B. both winners and losers in the global economy
C. free trade and comparative advantage
D. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

1. Mexican comparative advantage in some agricultural crops
2. reduction in traditional peasant lifestyles and crop mixes
3. monoculture production for export: problems
4. economic rationale has adverse cultural and social effects
5. Zapatista uprising

E. Cattle production in the Amazon
F. Global-local continuum works in both directions 

VII. Remote sensing for land use and land cover monitoring

A. pixels and brightness values
B. bands of the electromagnetic spectrum
C. satellite images as digital pictures
D. false color infrared
E. classification of land covers and change detection

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