AP Human Geography - Unit 5 Review Questions

How do farming practices interact with the physical environment?

The three most important elements of physical geography for agriculture are soil, landforms (topography), and climate.

What are the three primary rural settlement patterns?

• The three primary rural settlement patterns are clustered, dispersed, and linear. • Clustered settlements, or farm villages, are tightly bunched settlements that are often connected through family relationships, religious customs, and/or communal land ownership. • In dispersed settlements, families live relatively distant from one another, sometimes in isolated farmsteads. • In a linear settlement pattern, such as the long-lot pattern, buildings are arranged in a line, aft on along a road or river.

What are the three survey methods?

• The three rural survey methods are metes and bounds, township and range, and long-lot survey. • The metes and bounds survey system results in irregularly shaped lots. • The township and range survey system creates a checkerboard pattern on the landscape. • The long-lot survey system organizes land into rectangular lots.

What are the different types of agricultural practices?

• There are two broad categories of agricultural practices: intensive agriculutre and extensive agriculture. • Intensive agriculure requires high levels of labor and enough money to purchase seeds and/or equipment. • There are seven types of intensive agriculture: market gardening and truck farming, plantation agriculture, mixed crop/livestock farming, paddy rice farming, grain farming, livestock fattening, and dairy farming. • Extensive agriculture requires less labor and less monetary investment to successfully raise crops and livestock. The three types of extensive agriculture are shifting cultivation, nomadic herding, and livestock ranching. Depending upon the research interest, grain farming can be characterized as extensive agriculture.

How does bid-rent theory explain the relationship between land cost and intensive and extensive agricultural practices?

• According to bid-rent theory, the demand for land and price of land decrease as the distance from the market increases. • Intensive agricultural practices are established close to markets where demand for land is high because perishable products need to reach markets quickly. • Extensive agricultural practices that produce non perishable products on large tracts of land can locate at some distance from markets where demand for land is low.

How do changes in agricultural practices affect society?

• Agribusiness on a global scale has changed consumer diets on a local scale. • The continuing mechanization of agriculture affects women's roles in developing countries. • The use of agricultural products to create non-food products, such as biofuels, has expanded agricultural output but negatively affected the poor and undernourished.

How does the von Thunen model explain contemporary patterns of agriculture production at different scales?

• Applying the von Thunen model to the contemporary world shows variations at different scales. • The model is a useful tool for observing regional distribution of agriculture production. • A weakness of the model is its inability to identify specialty farming that does not conform to the relatively limited types of agriculture in von Thunen's zones (Ex: oranges in Florida, tobacco in Kentucky - specialty farming areas do not conform to the model)

What is climate, and how does it influence agriculture?

• Climate is the average pattern of weather over a long period of time. Climate influences the type of agriculture that a farmer chooses. • There are four major climate groups that are important to agriculture: (1) tropical, (2) dry, (3) moderate, and (4) continental

How do commodity chains affect agricultural practices?

• Commodity chains are created and used by large corporations or agribusinesses that provide goods and services to support the agricultural industry. • Individual farmers became part of the commodity chain through contracts with agribusiness.

What is domestication?

• Domestication is the multigenerational process through which humans selectively breed, protect, and care for plants and animals taken from wild populations to create genetically distinct species, known as domesticates. • The domestication of plants and animals and the cultivation of seed crops is called the First Agricultural Revolution. • Car Sauer proposed that the process of domestication was independently developed at different times and locations and then diffused outward.

How does large-scale commercial agriculture affect family farms?

• Economic forces push small family farms to consolidate by joining cooperative organizations or selling to larger corporations that string together farms for efficiencies and profits. • Changes in consumer preferences, fluctuations in U.S. government policies, and the forces of globalization favor large-scale operations rather than smaller family farms.

What are export commodities, and how do they affect countries?

• Export commodities are crops, such as sugar or coffee, that are produced for export to wealthier countries at the expense of crop production for local consumption. • Dependency on one or two commodities leaves a country vulnerable to crop failures, changes in consumer preferences, and the risk of food insecurity for the local population.

What are the contemporary challenges of feeding the global population?

• Food deserts are areas with limited access to fresh nutritious foods. Food deserts in urban settings are typically found in low-income areas. In rural areas, people who live in food deserts have the added challenge of a lack of public transportation to reach larger grocery stores. • Food insecurity occurs when large numbers of people experience long periods of inadequate diets. Chronic hunger resulting from food insecurity is a wide-spread, long-term problem that affects poor people in developing and developed countries. • Issues of food safety and contamination affect everyone, rich or poor. • Climate change can bring extreme weather, reduce crop yields, shift climate zones, and reduce the areas currently under cultivation. • Uneven distribution of food between wealthier countries and poorer countries contributes to malnutrition and hunger. • Good farmland is lost worldwide to suburbanization and second home development.

What are the global patterns of diffusion for domesticated plants and animals?

• For much of human history, domesticates and agricultural practices spread through expansion diffusion and more recently through relocation diffusion. • The Columbian Exchange is the interaction and widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, disease, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries. • Globalization drives modern diffusion's, extending the process begun by prehistoric peoples and continuing through the Columbian Exchange to the present.

Where are the early hearths of domesticated plants and animals?

• Hearts are centers where new practices develop and from which the new practices spread. • The early hearths of domestication include the Fertile Crescent and the Indus River Valley in Southwest Asia; China, South and Southeast Asia, and Malaysia; Africa, and the Americas.

How did increases in agricultural productivity affect societies and the environment during the Second Agricultural Revolution?

• Increases in productivity and improvement in the means of transporting surplus food led to better diets, increased population, longer life expectancies, falling death rates, and more non-farm workers laboring in factories. • Rural societies experienced an economic shift from subsistence farming to growing cash crops. • Overuse of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers has negative impacts on the environment and on the health of humans and wildlife.

What are the effects of political relationships, infrastructure, and patterns of world trade on global food distribution networks?

• International trade politics favors wealthier countries at the expense of developing countries. • Internal government policies affect food production and distribution, sometimes causing hunger or famine. • Colonial infrastructure designed to increase trade in export commodities continues to have a negative effect on local populations. • Patterns of world trade are driven by consumer preferences and agribusinesses.

Why do large-scale agribusinesses have an advantage over small-scale farmers?

• Large-scale agribusinesses benefit from economies of scale in all phases of production and consumption through consolidation of systems. • Large-scale agribusinesses employ specialists who monitor government policies on international and national levels that affect many aspects of production and consumption. • Small-scale farmers are not able to react to market or political changes as quickly or efficiently as large-scale agribusinesses.

How did technologies and innovations increase agricultural productivity during the Second Agricultural Revolution?

• New technologies such as the seed drill, steel plow, mechanical reaper, and gasoline-powered tractor increased agricultural productivity. • The development of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides led to increased production of food crops.

What are the effects of major agricultural practices on the rural landscape?

• Over one-third of Earth's surface is cultivated or pastured. • Agricultural practices and rural land-use patterns complement each other to make up the agricultural landscape. • Each intensive agricultural practice leaves a distinctive imprint on the landscape. • Extensive agricultural practices generally have a less permanent impact on the landscape.

Are contemporary agricultural innovations sustainable?

• Proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) point to the increase in productivity that comes with using genetically modified (GM) seeds. • Critics of GMPs dispute the increase in productivity. • Aquaculture, the cultivation and harvesting of aquatic organisms under controlled conditions, has experienced enormous growth since the 1970s.

How do agricultural practices alter the landscape?

• Shifting cultivation, terracing, and pastoralism alter the landscape, sometimes dramatically. • Draining wetlands for cultivation decreased biodiversity by destroying habitats. • Irrigation technologies, such as large dam construction and deep groundwater extraction, increase the amount of land under cultivation in arid areas and alter the landscape.

How are subsistence and commercial agricultural practices distributed across the world?

• Subsistence farming is spatially distributed in less economically developed regions. • Commercial agricultural practices are concentrated in more developed regions of the world.

What are the positive consequences of the Green Revolution on human populations and the environment?

• The Green Revolution has led to increased crop productivity for cereal grains grown by farmers using high-yield seeds. The increase in productivity allowed for the development of an export economy in Asian and Latin American countries. • The Green Revolution substantially decreased world hunger. • By increasing production on the same acreage, the Green Revolution made the use of agricultural land and resources more efficient.

What are the negative consequences of the Green Revolution on human populations and the environment?

• The expense of seed, fertilizer, and associated mechanization has made it difficult for poor farmers to participate in the Green Revolution. • There has been a loss of subsistence farming and an associated loss in plant diversity, genetic variety, and food security. • The geographical impact of the Green Revolution has been highly varied, with a limited effect throughout Africa. • The use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides can make farm workers ill and cause environmental contamination. • The improper use of irrigation has led to higher soil salinity and groundwater depletion in some areas.

How do geographers explain the interdependence of the global supply chain and agricultural production and consumption?

• The global food system is the outcome of the industrialization of agriculture. • The dominance of multinational agribusinesses illustrates the interdependence of production and consumption through the integration of all stages of the process. • Changes in consumer preferences, and therefore consumption, impact the production of food.

How do agricultural practices and land use impact the environment?

• The increased use of agrichemicals has affected humans and wildlife, causing reductions in animal and bird species and human health problems. • Agrichemicals can enter the wider environment through aerosol sprays and runoff, which can cause nutrient pollution in nearby waterways. • Agrichemicals can cause changes in land cover, desertification, and soil salinization. • Conservation efforts are having a positive impact on the environment without lessening agricultural productivity.

How has technology increased economies of scale and carrying capacity in agriculture?

• The industrial model of food production and distribution under large corporations has increased economies of scale and agricultural carrying capacity. • Increases in economies of scale and carrying capacity result from two important advances in technology: industrial inputs and mechanization

How do women's roles differ between subsistence and commerical agriculture?

• There is a formal division of labor among subsistence farmers in the developing world, with tastes typically divided by gender and age. • Women are a key to food security in both subsistence and commercial farming regions. • As technology advanced, farm women in developed countries were marginalized, just as the mechanization of farm work in the Green Revolution marginalized women farm workers in developing countries.

How does the percentage of women in the agricultural labor force vary worldwide?

• There is a wide variation in the percentage of women engaged in agriculture in developing economies that are based on subsistence farming, but studies suggest that women comprise about 45% of the agricultural workforce in these regions. • There is considerable variation across the globe in the number of women farm owners and managers engaged in commercial agriculture. Overall, women in developing countries, spend more time in agricultural production than women in developed countries. Less than one-third of farmers in the developed world are women.

What are the three primary characteristics of the Green Revolution?

• Three characteristics of the Green Revolution are the development and use of high-yield seeds, the increased use of synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides, and increased irrigation and mechanization.

How do food-choice movements influence patterns of food production and consumption?

• Urban farming provides enough fresh food for people to eat as well as some surplus to sell. • Community-supported agriculture and farmers' markets provide fresh fruits and vegetables to local consumers. • Organic farming uses ecological processes, natural biodiversity, and renewable resources rather than conventional farming practices. • A value-added spec Italy crop gives a greater portion of revenue to the producer rather than a middleman. • Fair trade is a third-party certification program that supports good crop prices for farmers and environmentally sound farming practices. • The slow-food movement attempts to resist fast food by preserving the cultural cuisine and the associated food and farming of an ecoregion. Locavores are people who dedicate themselves to slow-food diets and to obtaining as much of their nutrition as possible from local farms.

What are the underlying assumptions of the von Thunen model, and how does it apply to historic patterns of agricultural land use?

• Von Thunen created his model to understand agricultural land use as it relates to transportation costs to market. • There are six underlying assumptions of the original von Thunen model. • The four primary zones are (I) dairy farming and market gardening, (II) forest for wood, (III) grains and field crops, and (IV) ranching. • Historical applications correspond reasonably well with von Thunen's original model.