Diamond proposes that the processes through which past and present societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into 12 types (8 relate to past societies, while 4 apply to more contemporary societies)
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3-SYP3456-Lecture3-Agriculture.pptxAgriculture: Let’s Talk About Food Production
Everyone depends, directly or indirectly, on agriculture for our survival.
It’s important to remember that urban-industrial societies rely on the food surplus generated by farmers, ranchers, etc.
Agriculture-the tilling of crops and rearing of domesticated animals to produce food, feed, drink, and fiber, has been the principle enterprise of humans throughout recorded history.
Agriculture is, by far, the most important economic activity in the world, employing about 40% of the world’s population.
For thousands of years, farmers have found ways to cope with a large range of environmental conditions, creating an array of different types of food systems.
Collectively, these practices have constructed formal agricultural regions-geographic regions defined by a distinctive combination of physical and environmental conditions; crop type; settlement patterns; and labor, cultivation, and harvesting practices.
In order to understand agricultural regions, it’s important to consider the roles of environment, cultural factors, and the political and economic forces that influence a region.
Types of Agriculture
Swidden Cultivation-tropical lowlands and hills of the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia
“Swidden” is derived from an English term which means “burned clearing.” Also called “slash and burn” agriculture.
Swidden represents one type of subsistence agriculture- food production mainly for the family and local community.
Different crops typically share the same clearing-a practice called intercropping, allowing the taller, stronger crops to shelter the lower, more fragile ones. This reduces the chance of total crop losses from disease or pests and provides farmers with a varied diet.
Relatively little tending of the plants is necessary until harvest; no fertilizer is applied because the ashes from the fire provide sufficient nutrients.
The harvesting cycle is repeated for 3-5 yrs. Until soil fertility begins to decline-as nutrients are taken by crops and not replaced.
The fields are left fallow for 10-20 years and new clearings are prepared to replace them.
Benefits: Swidden is ecologically sustainable and has endured for thousands of years. Recent research indicates that some swidden systems actually enhance biodiversity. Furthermore, swidden returns more calories of food for the calories spent on cultivation than does modern mechanized agriculture.
Drawbacks: Under certain conditions, swidden can be destructive, as in the case of many tropical countries where a small proportion of the population owns most of the best agricultural land, forcing the majority of farmers to clear forests to gain access to land.
Paddy Rice Farming-practiced by peasant farmers in the humid tropical and subtropical parts of Asia (India, southwestern China, Korea, Japan)
Paddy rice farming forms the basis of civilizations in which almost all of the caloric intake is of plant origin.
A paddy rice farm of 3 acres is usually adequate to support a family because irrigated rice provides a very large output of food per unit of land.
Much tilling is needed and a system of irrigation that can deliver water where and when it’s needed is necessary.
Large amounts of fertilizer must be applied to the land.
Paddy rice farmers often plant and harvest the same plot of land twice per year-a practice called double-cropping.
These systems are extremely productive, yielding more food per acre than many forms of industrialized agriculture in the US.
The modern era produced a new form of paddy rice farming in more developed countries. The terrace structure is reengineered to produce larger fields that can be worked with machines; dams, electric pumps, and reservoirs provide a more reliable water supply; high yielding seeds, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers boost production further.
Peasant Grain, Root, and Livestock Farming-colder, drier areas of Asia, the Middle East, and Parts of Europe, Africa, and the highlands of Latin America and New Guinea
Peasant farmers practice a diverse system of agriculture based on grains, root crops, and livestock.
Peasant: a farmer belonging to a folk culture and practicing a traditional system of agriculture.
Most modern agricultural technologies are beyond the financial reach of most peasants.
Plantation Agriculture-in certain tropical and subtropical areas, Europeans and Americans introduced this.
Originated in the 1400s on Portuguese owned sugarcane producing islands off the coast of W. Africa but the greatest concentrations now are in the American tropics, Southeast Asia, and tropical S. Asia.
A plantation is a landholding devoted to capital-intensive, large-scale, specialized production of one tropical or subtropical crop for the global market.
Most are located by the sea, to provide for easy shipment to Europe, the US, and Japan.
Long relied on large amounts of manual labor.
Workers usually live on the plantation where a rigid social and economic segregation produces a two-class society of managers and workers. Tensions are usually high and the social ills of plantations are far from cured.
The concentration of ownership is among a handful of multinational corporations, such as Dole and Chiquita.
Plantations provide the base for European and American economic expansion into tropical Asia, Africa, and Latin America, maximizing the production of luxury crops such as sugarcane, bananas, coffee, coconuts, spices, tea, cacao, pineapples, rubber, and tobacco.
Textile factories require cotton, sisal, jute, help, and other fiber crops from plantation areas.
Much of the profit from plantations is exported, with the crops, to Europe and America-one source of friction between the global north and south.
Market gardening- also known as truck farming; located in developed nations.
Specialize in intensively cultivated nontropical fruits, vegetables and vines.
Many districts focus on one product, such as wine, table grapes, raisins, olives, oranges and the entire crop is raised for the market, instead of consumption on the farm.
Livestock fattening-the Corn Belt of the US Midwest; much of western and central Europe and overseas in European settlements such as Brazil and S. Africa
Farmers raise corn and soybeans (oats and potatoes in Europe) to feed cattle and hogs.
Typically, slaughterhouses are located near the feedlots.
This creates a meat-producing region, which is often dependent upon mobile populations of cheap, immigrant labor.
One of the traditional characteristics of livestock fattening is the combination of crops and animal husbandry.
Farmers breed many of the animals they fatten
Recently, some of this activity has become specialized-some concentrating of breeding animals, others prepare them for market.
In a factory-like feedlot, farmers raise imported cattle and hogs on purchased feed.
Increases in the amount of land and crop harvest devoted to beef production have accompanied a growth in feedlot size and number. In the US and across Europe, 51-75% of all grain raised goes to livestock fattening.
The livestock fattening and slaughtering industry has become increasingly concentrated on national and global scales.
In 1980 in the US, the top 4 companies were providing 41% of all slaughtered cattle. By 2000, the top 4 companies were providing 81% of all feedlot cattle.
Corporate conglomerates such as ConAgra and Cargill control much of the beef supply through their domination of the grain market and ownership of feedlots and slaughterhouses.
Grain Farming- the US, Canada, Australia, the EU, and Argentina together account for over 85% of the world’s wheat exports and the US alone accounts for 70% of the world’s corn exports.
Farms in these areas are generally very large, ranging from family-run wheat farms to giant corporate operations.
Widespread use of machinery, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically engineered seed varieties enable grain farmers to operate on a large scale.
The planting and harvesting is more mechanized than any other form of farming.
For example, the suitcase farm is found in the Wheat Belt of the US. The people who own and operate the farms do not live on the land and most have several suitcase farms, lined up in a south-to-north row through the plains states. With fleets of farm machinery, the send a group of laborers north to plant, fertilize, and harvest the wheat and move south throughout the year. Except for these migratory crews, these farms are uninhabited.
Dairying-Northern US to the Upper Midwest, western and northern Eurpope, Southeastern Australia, Northern New Zealand
Similar to livestock fattening, this type of agriculture relies on large-scale use of pastures. In some colder areas, some land must be used for feed crops, especially hay.
A number of dairy farmers have adopted the feedlot system and raise their cows on feed purchased from other sources.
Nomadic Herding- in the dry or cold lands of the Eastern Hemisphere, especially in the deserts and praries of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the interior of Eurasia
Nomadic Livestock Herders-graze cattle, sheep, goats, and camels-continuously moving with their livestock in search of forage for their animals.
Their need for mobility dictates that their few material possessions be portable and their lifestyle effects how they measure wealth (which is measured by the size of one’s heard, rather than accumulation of property or possessions).
Usually, nomads obtain nearly all of life’s necessities from livestock or from bartering with farmers.
For many reasons, nomadic herding has been on the decline.
Some national policies encourage nomads to practice sedentary cultivation (farming in fixed and permanent fields). This practice was introduced by British and French colonizers, who wanted grater control of the people.
Today, many nomads are voluntarily abandoning their traditional life to seek jobs in urban areas or in the Middle East oil fields.
Recent anthropological research indicates the sound logic of nomadic herding.
Nomadic herding is a rational response to an erratic and unpredictable environment.
Rainfall is highly irregular in time and space, and herding practices must adjust.
Mobility allows herders to take full advantage of the resulting variations in range productivity.
Livestock Ranching- worldwide
Ranchers are found worldwide in conditions that are too harsh for crop production.
They raise only 2 kinds of animals in large numbers: cattle and sheep.
In the US, Canada, subtropical and tropical Latin America and the warmer parts of Australia, they produce cattle.
Midlatitude ranchers in cooler and wetter climates produce sheep (e.g. Australia, China, and New Zealand).
Urban Agriculture-worldwide
The UN calculated that by 2008, for the first time in history, more people live in cities than in the countryside.
Urban Agriculture is the raising of food, including fruit, vegetables, meat, and milk inside cities-especially common in poor nations.
Most of city dwellers in these areas now produce enough to feed themselves and sometimes, to sell.
In China, urban agriculture now provides 90% or more of the vegetables consumed in cities.
In 2010, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization convened the first symposium on urban agriculture in Africa in recognition of the important role it will play in feeding the continent’s 21st century residents.
In the developed world, urban agriculture is becoming more prevalent. The reasons are complex but almost everywhere it is seen as a partial solution to problems of food insecurity and lack of access to nutritious foods in the city.
According to the WHO, the promotion of local food production in European cities will aid in reducing poverty and inequality.
Aquaculture-worldwide
The cultivation, under controlled circumstances, of aquatic organisms, primarily for food but also for scientific and aquarium uses.
Aquaculture includes mariculture-shrimp, oyster, fish farming, pearl cultivation, and more
An ancient practice, dating back at least 4,500 yrs.
Includes traditional forms, such as the construction of retention pools to trap fish, and commercial forms, such as industrialized, large-scale protein factories.
At the turn of the 21st century, aquaculture experienced rapid growth worldwide and its share of production is projected to continue growing as demand for sea food increases and wild-fish stocks decline.
The extraordinary expanse of aquaculture has come at great expense to the environment and human health.
Most aquaculture relies on large energy and chemical inputs, including antibiotics and artificial feeds made from the wastes of poultry and hog processing.
Such processing tends to be concentrated in fish farming, creating potential health threats to consumers.
The discharge from a fish farm can be equivalent to the sewage from a small city and can pollute nearby natural aquatic ecosystems.
Nonagricultural Areas-areas of extreme climate, especially deserts and subarctic forests don’t support agriculture
Often these areas are inhabited by hunter-gatherers-groups of people (such as the Inuit) who gain livelihood by hunting game, fishing where possible, and gathering edible and medicinal wild plants.
Today, fewer than 1% of humans live as hunter-gathers.
References
Domosh, Mona, Neumann, Roderick P., Price, Patricia L., and Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov. 2013. The Human Mosaic: A Cultural Approach to Human Geography. WH Freeman & Co.: New York.
