APHG- UNIT 5

Geothermal Power

This type of energy uses heat from the interior of the earth in the form of steam, which powers turbines to create electricity.

The Green Revolution

To increase food availability to rapidly growing populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, higher-yield seeds, expanded use of chemical inputs, and other agricultural technologies were diffused from developed to developing regions (where population growth was greatest) in the 1970's and 1980's. Techniques greatly improved and continue to improve the amount of food available for growing populations. Much of the technology is costly, limiting its full impacts in developing regions.

Agricultural Production in the United States

Truck and fruit farming exists in the relatively mild climates of central California and the southeast coast. Range livestock dominates agricultural production in the western region of the country. The midwest states including Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and parts of Kansas and South Dakota produce feed grains and livestock and are collectively known as the "Corn Belt". Mixed farming with crop specialties, such as cotton, dominate agricultural production in the southeast. Wheat and small grains are common in the states and parts of states in the Midwest that do not concentrate in corn production.

Mixed and Specialty Crop Farming

Truck farms or market gardens produce mixed and specialty crops; in both types climate largely determines production. Truck farming involves large-scale production of particular fruits or vegetables for sale in climate regions where that particular product cannot be grown. Market gardening involves small-scale growing of fruits or vegetables for sale at local markets. Mediterranean agriculture prevalent in the Mediterranean-style climates of California, Western Europe, and portions of Australia, Chile, and South Africa exemplify both systems, consisting of diverse specialty crops such as grapes, avocados, and olives.

Extensive Subsistence Agriculture

Two dominant systems include nomadic herding and shifting cultivation. Nomadic herding involves seasonal movement of herds (e.g., goats, sheep, camels, and yaks) over large territories. Shifting cultivation, also called slash-and-burn or swidden, involves hacking down existing vegetation, burning it to release nutrients into soil, and then planting a variety of crops (maize, millet, rice, manioc, cassava, yams, etc.).

Commercial Livestock Production

Two major forms include livestock ranching and dairying. Livestock ranching is widespread throughout much of Australia, western North America, South America, southern Africa, and western Asia. Dairying is especially prevalent in northern Europe and the northern United States.

Desertification

When marginal lands, typically on the fringes of the desert, such as the Sahel Region south of the Sahara Desert in Africa, are overcultivated or overgrazed, the soil gets stripped of any existing vegetation and becomes increasingly desert-like.

Organic Agriculture

farming without aid of artificial inputs such as pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and genetically engineered seeds. Organic farming has grown tremendously over the last couple of decades. Farmer's markets have also grown; selling local produce; indicating a recent trend in more sustainable forms of agricultural production.

Crop Rotation

A farming method that involves rotating the sequence of crops planted in a particular field to avoid depleting nutrients in the soil as different crops use different nutrients in the growing process. Through rotation, the soil can be replenished without the use of synthetic fertilizers.

Shifting Cultivation

A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another; each field is used for crops for relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.

Biopharming

A particular form of biotechnology in which genes from other life forms (e.g., plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, or humans) are inserted into a host plant.

Food Production vs. Agriculture

Agriculture does not always lead to food, and food is not necessarily always produced through agriculture. Some common agricultural goods are raised for nonfood purposes: corn for ethanol, rubber for tires, leather for shoes, and so on. Many food products are not produced through agricultural methods, such as artificial sweeteners, processed cheeses, and so on.

Biomass

Alternative energy source that involves converting a variety of biological materials- crops, vegetation, and human and animal waste- into fuel for automobile and engines.

Aquaculture

Basically fish farming, involving breeding of fish in freshwater ponds, lakes, or canals or in estuaries or bays that have been fenced off.

Hunting and Gathering

Before domestication of plants and animals, humans subsisted on hunting and gathering; human diet consisted of animals captured and a collection of wild plants. Typically males were hunters, while females performed gathering duties. Has been largely replaced by agriculture; a few tribes still sustain themselves this way.

Transportation and Agriculture

Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, transportation has had dramatic impacts on commercial agriculture. Today, many isolated spots on Earth's Surface remain subsistence economies simply because of limited access to other parts of the world. Modern technological advances in transportation, such as refrigerated trucks, have allowed farmers to ship items at great distances.

Renewable Resources

Can be replenished relatively quickly by natural or human-assisted processes. They include food, forests, grassland, and animals. If resources are mismanaged, they can be completely depleted.

Capital-Intensive vs. Labor-Intensive Agriculture

Capital-intensive methods use mechanical goods, including machinery, tools, vehicles, and facilities to produce large amounts of agricultural goods, a process requiring very little human labor. Labor-intensive goods use human hands in large abundance to produce a given amount of output.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

Agriculture

Defined as the growing of crops or tending of livestock for subsistence purposes and/or for sale or exchange.

Rural Settlement Types

Dispersed settlements are characterized by widespread farms, relatively isolated from neighbors. Nucleated settlements contain a number of families living closer together with fields surrounding the settlement. Building materials for rural settlements are typically indigenous to the local area.

Industrial Revolutions's Effect on Agriculture

Dramatically altered the global geography of agriculture, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Millions of people migrated from rural areas into cities of England, France, Germany, and the U.S., creating enormous new markets for agricultural products from adjacent rural areas. Mechanization replaced human hands allowing farmers to produce more crops with less work. Increased access to efficient transportation allowed farmers to ship their products farther at lower costs.

Urban Agriculture

Establishment of agriculture practices in or very near to a city. Long popular in developing countries; developed countries are seeing a resurgence in urban agricultural production as increased sensitivity to food security/health concerns motivate communities to have greater knowledge of and control over the origin of their food.

The Boserup Hypothesis

Esther Boserup, a Danish economists in the mid-20th Century, countered Malthus's population growth hypothesis with her book "The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Under Population Pressure". Boserup observed that agricultural production can accommodate growing population through increase in soil fertility (by using various chemicals), which allows land to produce more food for more people.

Extensive vs. Intensive Agriculture

Extensive agriculture involves large areas of land and minimal labor input per acre; typically produces less and supports smaller populations than intensive agriculture. Intensive agriculture involves cultivation of smaller plots of land with substantial labor inputs and typically more chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides); produces more food per acre to support higher populations.

Origins of Agriculture

First agricultural revolution involved a transition from hunting and gathering societies to sedentary agricultural societies through domestication of plants and animals. Some argue that women were most likely first to domesticate plants as their duty in hunting and gathering societies was gathering seeds, nuts, and berries, providing them with necessary knowledge for vegetative planting. Carl Sauer, In Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, proposed several independent hearths of agriculture in the Middle East, South and Central America, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.

Von Thunen Results

For local food production economies, the von Thunen Model does well predicting agricultural patterns in that intensive goods are generally grown close to market, whereas extensive goods are grown farther. Model can be altered to account for transportation networks and competing markets, resulting in changes in shape and size of zones of productivity surrounding the market. With globalization of agriculture, the von Thunen model becomes nearly obsolete as local food economies are replaced by large-scale agricultural production.

Forestry

Generally restricted to forests in upper mid-latitudes of Northern Hemisphere and equatorial zoned of Central Africa, South and Central America, and Southeast Asia. Half of the global logging harvest is for industrial consumption; the majority of this wood comes from developed countries, including Canada, Russia, and the United States. Other half of logging harvest is for fuel-wood and charcoal; this occurs primarily in developing regions where wood sources are the primary energy supply.

Globalization of Agriculture

Globalization affects agriculture through the improvements in transportation and communications technologies. Agribusinesses functionally integrate agricultural production on a global scale, which, along with increasing free trade, allows for easy exchange of agricultural goods in a global economy. Visiting a produce section of any large grocery store in the developed world provides evidence of globalization of agriculture through variety of goods offered year-round and variety of places from which those products originate.

Tropical Plantations

Grow crops such as sugarcane and coffee. Widespread throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. Typically have some form of foreign control, either through investments, management, or marketing. Many of their crops, while suitable for local environment, are not native to it and almost always exported to other countries rather than consumed locally.

Urban Sprawl and Agriculture

In many areas of the United States and throughout the developed world, urban sprawl has and continues to overtake formerly productive agricultural areas, converting fields and orchards to parking lots and subdivisions Many local governments and planning commissions seek to halt this through zoning of agricultural lands, for many farmers, especially in places with expensive real estate, selling land to developers proves more profitable than farming it.

Deforestation

In rapidly growing developing countries, the need for fuel-wood is increasing quite dramatically, leading to deforestation. In Central and South America millions of hectares converted to pasture on an annual basis, primarily for beef cattle destined for American meat market.

Economic Systems

In subsistence economies, goods and services created for use by producer and his or her family. In commercial (market) economies, producers produce goods and services with the goal of making a profit. In planned economies, government determines both supply and price of goods and services produced by citizens of that country.

Nuclear Energy

In this form of energy, a nuclear reaction generates tremendous heat, which is used to create steam, which in turn is used to power turbines that create electricity. A controversial form of energy production because the nuclear fuel is radioactive and can cause harm to humans and the environment. Finding ways to dispose of it after it has been used has proven quite challenging.

Hydroelectric Power

In this form of energy, water turns turbines that generate electricity. Typically, hydroelectric power is generated from dams.

Mineral Fuels

Include coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Energy derived from these fuels strongly associated with economic development; places with highest rates of energy consumption, also most economically advanced. Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel; not at risk to run out any time in near future. Currently, China and the USA lead globe in coal production.

Primary Economic Activities Besides Agriculture

Include fishing, forestry, and the mining and quarrying of minerals. Fishing, forestry, and fur trapping are gathering industries based on harvest of renewable resources, which, despite their renewable characteristic, are all at risk of depletion because of overexploitation. Mining and quarrying are extractive industries involving removal of nonrenewable resources.

Luxury Crops

Include luxury food items not necessary for everyday living and not indigenous to the areas they export to. Include bananas, coffee, cocoa, pineapples, and flowers among other crops typically grown in tropical environments. Often grown on plantations or other land in developing countries where labor is cheap and then exported to developed regions. Production often controlled by foreign agribusinesses.

Biotechnology

Includes all technological improvements on biological systems to either make or enhance specific agricultural goods or food products.

Commercial Grain Farming

Includes wheat and corn; especially prevalent in American Great Plains, southern Russia, and increasingly in China. Large portion of output goes toward feeding livestock. In general, meat generates more profit than grain at market, thus many farmers choose to convert grain into meat by feeding it to livestock.

Negative Impacts of the Green Revolution

Increased food security provided by Western agricultural techniques and technologies had major downsides for local agricultural economies of developing world. New machinery, "miracle" seeds, elaborate irrigation systems, and potent fertilizers devastated much of the local land, destroying traditional modes of agricultural production, and may likely lead to future problems with food security through decreases in local biodiversity. Multinational corporation involvement steered local economies away from producing food for local consumption and toward producing specialty crops for export, such as peanuts, pineapples, and bananas.

Primary Economic Activities

Involve direct extraction or harvesting of resources from the land. Includes agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining. Location of primary economic activities generally limited to location of natural resources.

Commercial Agriculture

Involves food production primarily for sale from a farm. Often involves sale of farm goods to food-processing companies rather than directly to consumers.

Land Survey Patterns

Long-lot surveying is French and house exist on narrow lots perpendicular to a river, giving each household equal access to river resources. Metes and bound are English and use local geography with directions and distances to define boundaries for a particular piece of land. Township and range is a US survey system that divided land west of Ohio after the Louisiana Purchase according to a 6 mile-square blocks (township) that were further divided into 1 mile-square blocks (range). The ranges were typically further broken down and sold or given to people to develop.

Metallic and Nonmetallic Minerals

Metallic minerals include copper, lead, and iron ore, among others; production affected by quantity available, quality of ore, and distance to markets. If minerals can be obtained from other sources for cheaper cost, mines may not be developed at all or shut down temporarily. Nonmetallic minerals include sand, gravel, building stone, gypsum, and limestone; primarily used for construction purposes. Generally only mined near site where they will be used due to relative availability.

Petroleum

Modern industrial and postindustrial society heavily dependent on petroleum. Geographically uneven resource. Dependence on this energy source is risky as amount available is both quickly depleting and difficult to determine. Currently, the Middle East controls more than two thirds of the world total, demonstrating unevenness of availability.

Natural Resources

Naturally occurring materials that human society perceives to be necessary to its economic well-being; distribution of most resources is geographically uneven.

Feedlots/CAFOs

OFten called CAFOs (Contained or Confined Animal Feeding Operations); animals concentrated in small spaces and given antibiotics, hormones, and other fattening grains to prepare them for slaughter at a much quicker pace than traditional forms of raising livestock. Emit large amounts of greenhouse gases and a tremendous amount of waste.

Transhumance

Pastoral practice of seasonal migration of livestock (e.g., goats, sheep, yaks, etc.) between mountains and lowland pasture areas during winter.

Pastoralism/Transhumance

Pastoralism is a form of subsistence agriculture that involves breeding and herding of animals to provide humans with food, shelter, and clothing. Transhumance is a form of pastoralism that involves the seasonal movement of herds, typically to warmer lowland areas in winter and cooler highland areas in summer.

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

People producing food or raising animals to provide for themselves and family. Supports higher population density through much labor on small plots of land. Examples include wet rice production in many parts of South and Southeast Asia, and urban agriculture, in which families raise food to support themselves.

Environmental Implications of Agriculture

Pesticides, such DDT, have harmed wildlife populations; polluted rivers, lakes, and oceans; and worked their way through the food chain all the way to human beings. Topsoil loss, or erosion, is particularly problematic in areas with fragile soils, steep slopes, or torrential seasonal rains . Salinization occurs when soils in arid areas are heavily irrigated. Applied water quickly evaporates leaving salty residues, rendering soil infertile. Desertification is the process by which formerly fertile lands become increasingly arid, unproductive, and desertlike.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Plants or animals whose DNA has been genetically modified, often through combination of DNA from a similar plant or animal species. Advantages- less need for chemical inputs, greater outputs on smaller pieces of land, allowing for greater food security for growing populations. Disadvantages- Unknown health effects, effects on pollinating insect populations, and is cost prohibitive for small-scale farmers or farmers in developing regions of the globe.

Local Food Production

Refers to a food production system where food (crops and animals) are produced locally for local consumption.

Food Security

Refers to reliable access, at all scales (individual, household, country), to enough good to ensure active and healthy lives. When a community is food insecure, that means the people don't have reliable access to healthy foods; these communities are often called food deserts.

Mining and Quarrying

Relatively recent economic activities due to dependence on fairly sophisticated knowledge of the environment. Provide energy base for way of life existent in advanced economies, as this includes harvesting of fossil fuels. Strongest base for international trade connecting developed and developing countries, both in terms of actual trade of these resources, and because transportation technology that allows global trade depends on availability of these resources.

Wind Farms

Sometimes called "Windmill Parks", these areas of land use giant wind turbines that convert wind energy into a renewable energy source.

Fertile Crescent

Sometimes thought of as the "cradle of civilization," it was once the hearth of early agriculture, which led to its being a hearth of early civilization. Located in the Middle East, the area's fertile soils were attributed to its location in the Euphrates, Nile, and Tigris Rivers floodplains.

Rural Settlements

Sparsely settled areas removed from the influence of large cities. Residents usually live in villages, hamlets, farms, or other isolated housing. Economy usually based on primary activities such as agriculture, forestry, mining, or fishing.

Maladaptive Diffusion

The diffusion of an idea or technology that works well in one area or region but is not suitable for the area it diffuses to. Much of the technology diffused in the Green Revolution was not suitable for local populations. For example, hybrid seeds diminished local plant diversity, which caused loss of traditional modes of agriculture/plant management. It also led to problems of food security in several developing regions.

Fishing

The global fish supply, which accounts for about 15% of human's animal protein consumption, comes from inland catch (lakes, ponds, rivers); fish farming (controlled production in contained environment); or marine catch (wild fish in coastal waters or seas). The UN reports that all 17 of the world's major oceanic fishing areas are fished at or beyond capacity. Overfishing and effects of pollution on fish stocks have led to dramatic decrease in fish stocks over last couple of decades.

Food Regime

The links that exist between food producers, food consumers, and investment/accumulation opportunities that support a dominant type of food during a particular time period.