Agriculture, the world’s most space-consuming activity and one of humanity’s leading occupations, is the science and art of cultivating crops and rearing livestock in order to produce food and fiber for sustenance or for economic gain. The historical distribution of agriculture has been critical to the survival and success of the human species. Throughout the vast bulk of the span of our existence (95% or more of it), we were hunters and gatherers, not agriculturalists; people were food collectors, not producers. The Neolithic Revolution, roughly 10,000 years ago, witnessed the invention or discovery of agriculture, making possible a nonnomadic existence. It paved the way for a social surplus and the rise of cities, denser social forms and more refined divisions of labor, and fostered the development of new technologies such as writing, pottery, and metal working. Until the nineteenth century, however, agriculture produced relatively little food per worker, so most of the population worked full-time or part-time on the land. The small surplus of food released few people for other pursuits. Not until the industrialization of agriculture that began in Europe during the past 200 years did large-scale employment in manufacturing and service activities become possible. The shift of labor from the agricultural sector to other sectors constitutes one of the most remarkable changes in the world economy in modern times. In the United States and the United Kingdom, less than 2% of the economically active population now works directly in agriculture. In contrast, about 70% of the populations in a number of African and Asian countries are engaged in the agricultural sector. Economic geographers are concerned with problems of agricultural development and change as well as with patterns of rural land use. Where was agriculture discovered? How did it diffuse? Why do farmers so often fail to prevent environmental problems? What are the characteristics of the main agricultural systems around the world? What is the effect of industrialized agriculture on farmers and the countryside? What principles can help us understand the spatial organization of rural land use? What are the consequences of government agricultural policy? In this chapter, we seek answers to these questions. Agriculture had a long, rich history prior to the emergence of modern capitalist food production. Medieval farming methods prevailed in Western Europe until capitalism invaded the rural manor. The rise of market forces in agriculture transformed food into a commodity, something to be bought and sold for a profit. Land uses changed to crops that generated the highest rate of profit and replaced subsistence agriculture with market-oriented agriculture. Open fields were enclosed by fences, hedges, and walls. Crop rotation replaced the medieval practice of fallowing fields. Seeds and breeding stock improved. New agricultural areas opened up in the Americas. Farm machines replaced or supplemented human or animal power. The family farm came to represent the core model of commercial agriculture. This transformation resulted from a vast population increase in the new trading cities that depended on the countryside for food and raw materials. Another force that brought the market into the countryside was the alienation of the manorial holdings. Lords, who needed cash to exchange for manufactured goods and luxuries, began to rent their lands to peasants rather than having them farmed directly through feudal labor-service obligations. Thus, they became landlords in the modern sense of the term.
THE FORMATION OF A GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM
By A.D. 1500, on the eve of European overseas expansion, agriculture had spread widely throughout the Old World and much of the New World. In Europe, the Middle East, Africa, central Asia, China, India, and Indonesia, cereal farming and horticulture were common features of the rural economy. Non-agricultural areas of the Old World were restricted to the Arctic fringes of Europe and Asia and to parts of southern and central Africa. Agriculture had not spread beyond the Indonesian islands into Australia. By the time of the first European voyages across the Atlantic, the cultivation of maize, beans, and squash in the New World had spread throughout Central America and the humid environment of eastern North America as far north as the Great Lakes. In South America, only parts of the Amazon Basin, the uplands of northeastern Brazil, and the dry temperate south did not have an agricultural economy. These patterns of agriculture persisted until the era of European colonial conquests. Eventually, European settlements assumed two forms: (1) farm-family colonies in the middle latitudes of North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa; and (2) plantation colonies in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These two types of agricultural settlements differed considerably. For example, farm colonization in North America depended on a large influx of European settlers whose agricultural products were initially for a local market rather than an export market. Europeans introduced the farm techniques, field patterns, and types of housing characteristic of their homelands, yet they often modified their customs to meet the challenge of organizing the new territory. For example, the checkerboard pattern of farms and fields that characterizes much of the country west of the Ohio River resulted from a federal system of land allocation (the Township and Range System). It involved surveying a baseline and a principal meridian, the intersection of which served as a point of origin for dividing the land into 6-by-6-mile townships, then into square-mile sections, and still further into quarter sections a half-mile long. This orderly system of land allocation prevented many boundary disputes as settlers moved into the interior of the United States. In tropical areas, Europeans, and later Americans and the Japanese, imposed a plantation agricultural system that did not require substantial settlement by expatriates. Plantations are large-scale agricultural enterprises devoted to the specialized production of one tropical product raised for the market. They were first developed in the 1400s by the Portuguese on islands off the tropical West African coast. Plantations produced luxury foodstuffs, such as spices, tea, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, and sugarcane, and industrial raw materials, such as cotton, rubber, sisal, jute, and hemp. These crops were selected for their market value in international trade, and they were grown near the seacoast to facilitate shipment to Europe. Thus, plantations represent the first wave in the global commodification of agriculture. The creation of plantations sometimes involved expropriating land used for local food crops. Sometimes, by irrigation or by clearing forests, new lands were brought under cultivation. Europeans managed plantations; they did little manual labor. The plantation system relied on forced or poorly paid indigenous labor. Very little machinery was used. Instead of substituting machinery for laborers when local labor supplies were exhausted, plantation managers went farther afield to bring in additional laborers. This practice was especially convenient because world demand for crops fluctuated.
During periods of increased demand, production could be accelerated by importing additional laborers, thus making the need for installing machinery during booms unnecessary and minimizing the financial problems of idle capital during slumps. The effect of centuries of European overseas expansion was to reorganize agricultural land use worldwide. Commercial agricultural systems have become a feature of much of the world. Hunting and gathering, the oldest means of survival, has virtually disappeared. Nomadic pastoralists, such as the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania who drive cattle in a never-ending search for pasture and water, have steadily declined in numbers, often victims of the fixed borders of the nation-state. Subsistence farming still exists, but only in areas where impoverished farmers, especially in developing countries, eke out a living from tiny plots of land. Few completely self-sufficient farms exist; most farmers, even in remote areas of Africa and Asia, trade with their neighbors at local markets.
THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a third agricultural revolution took place that resolved the distinction between family and corporate models of agriculture. In other words, this revolution signified the elimination of distinct agrarian economies and communities. Industrial agriculture has become the dominant form in most developed countries and is being applied to exportoriented regions of developing countries. Key elements of industrial agriculture are extreme capital intensity, high energy use, concentration of economic power, and a quest for lower unit costs of production. Although industrial agriculture has increased output per unit of input, it has also depleted water and soil resources, polluted the environment, and destroyed a way of life for millions of farm families. The industrialization of agriculture drastically reduced the number of farmers in North America. In the United States, the number declined from 7 million in 1935 to around 1.7 million in 2008. In Canada, 600,000 farm operators existed in 1951 but less than one-third that number were still in operation in 2008. Europe witnessed similar trends. In Britain, for example, a decline in the number of farm workers has been going on for decades. Today, the percentage of a labor force engaged in primary economic activities (agriculture, logging, fishing, mining) is a useful measure of economic development around the world: Economically advanced countries have a small share of their workers in agriculture, such as in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, whereas in much of the developing world significant proportions of workers are engaged in farming. In most of Africa and East Asia, for example, more than 60% of the employed population works as peasant farmers.
Human Impacts on the Land
The emergence of agriculture and its subsequent spread throughout the world has meant that little, if any, land still can be considered “natural” or untouched. Almost everywhere, nature has been modified extensively by human beings, making it difficult to speak of nature as a phenomenon separate from human impacts. Vegetation has been changed most noticeably. Virtually all vegetation zones show signs of extensive clearing, burning, and the browsing of domestic animals. The impoverishment of vegetation has led to the creation of successful agricultural and pastoral landscapes, but it has also led to land degradation or a reduction of land capability. Hunters and gatherers hardly disturb vegetation, but farmers must displace vegetation to grow their crops and to tend their livestock. Farmers are land managers; they upset an equilibrium established by nature and substitute their own. If they apply their agrotechnology with care, the agricultural system may last indefinitely and remain productive. On the other hand, if they apply their agrotechnology carelessly, the environment may deteriorate rapidly. How farmers actually manage land depends not only on their knowledge and perception of the environment but also on their relations with groups in the wider society—in the state and the world economy. As agriculture intensifies, environmental alteration increases. Anthropologist Ester Boserup proposed a simple but famous stage model of agriculture. Stage 1, forestfallow cultivation, involves cultivation for 1 to 3 years followed by 20 to 25 years of fallow. In Stage 2, bush-fallow cultivation, the land is cultivated for 2 to 8 years, followed by 6 to 10 years of fallow. In Stage 3, short-fallow cultivation, the land is fallow for only 1 to 2 years. In Stages 4 and 5, annual cropping and multicropping, fallow periods are either very short—a few months—or nonexistent. Boserup noted that the transition from one form of agriculture to another was accompanied by an increasing population density, improved tools, increasing integration of livestock, improved transportation, a more complex social infrastructure, more permanent settlement and land tenure, and more labor specialization. In contrast, permanent agriculture (annual cropping and multicropping) usually occurs in areas of high potential productivity and high population pressure. Under permanent cultivation, the land becomes totally transformed, yet the fertility of the land may not be impaired. For example, soils of the Paris Basin have been cultivated intensively for hundreds of years and still they remain highly productive. In many parts of East Asia, carefully terraced hillsides have maintained the productivity of valuable soil resources for thousands of years. In general, industrialized farming practices pose the main danger to the environment. Clean tillage on large fields, monoculture (the cultivation or growth of a single crop), and the breaking down of soil structure by huge machines are a few factors that may destroy the topsoil. Repeated droughts and dust storms in the twentieth century on the Great Plains of the United States gave testimony to how nature and industrial agriculture can combine to destroy the health of a steppe landscape. Agriculture threatens ecological balances when people begin to believe that they have freed themselves from dependence on land resources. In developed countries, there is a tendency to exploit the land as a result of pressure to maximize profits. Corporate producers want to make land use more efficient and productive; thus, farming is often viewed as just another industry. However, we must remember that land is more than a means to an end; it is finite, spatially fixed, and ecologically fragile.
FACTORS AFFECTING RURAL LAND USERural land-use patterns, which are arrangements of fields and larger land-use areas at the farm, regional, or global level, are difficult to understand. Worldwide, hundreds of farm types exist. The most interesting aspect of the world’s agricultural land-use areas or regions is not their extent but the uniformity of land-use decisions farmers make within them. Given any farming region, why do farmers make similar land-use decisions? Several variables determine land use, including site characteristics and cultural preferences and perception, which are discussed next.
Climatic LimitationsVariations in rural land use depend partly on climatic characteristics, such as soil type and fertility, slope, drainage, exposure to sun and wind, and the amount of rainfall and average annual temperature. Plants require particular combinations of temperature and moisture. Absolute physical limits of the crop are “too wet,” “too dry,” “too cold,” and “too hot.” Absolute climatic limits are wide for some crops, such as maize and wheat, but narrow for others, such as pineapples, cocoa, bananas, and certain wine grapes.
Cultural Preferences and Perceptions
Food preferences, often having religious origins, are one variable affecting the type of agricultural activity at a given site. For example, many Africans avoid protein-rich chickens and their eggs. Hindus abstain from eating beef; Jews and Muslims do not eat pork (Figure 6.4). Most people in East and Southeast Asia abstain from drinking milk or eating milk products. In the United States, a consumer preference for meat (enhanced by the enormous lobbying power of corporate agribusiness) leads American farmers to plant a greater proportion of their land in forage crops for animal feed than do European farmers, who grow more food crops. People interpret the environment through different cultural lenses. Their agricultural experiences in one area influence their perceptions of environmental conditions in other areas. Consider the settlement of North America. The first European settlers were Anglo-Saxons accustomed to moist conditions and a tree-covered landscape. They equated trees with fertility. If land was to be suitable for farming, it should, in its natural state, have a cover of trees. Thus, the settlers of New England and the East Coast realized their expectations of a fertile farming region. When Anglo-Saxons edged onto the prairies and high plains west of the Mississippi River, they encountered a treeless, grass-covered area. They under-estimated the richness of the prairie soils, in particular, and the area became known as the “Great American Desert.” In the late nineteenth century, a new wave of migrants from the steppe grasslands of Eastern Europe appraised the fertility of the grass-covered area more accurately than the Anglo-Saxons who preceded them did. The settlers from Eastern Europe, together with technological inventions such as barbed-wire fencing and the moldboard plow, helped to change the perception of the prairies from the Great American Desert to the Great American Breadbasket. Land degradation is a function of many variables, including the type of farming system utilized and the educational levels of land managers. In the mountains of Ethiopia, where cultivation has been occurring for 2000 years with a low rate of soil loss, the cumulative erosion of good soil has resulted in a serious decline in the capability of the land. In comparison, in the hills of northern Thailand, where rates of soil loss are much higher, the local land management system has compensated for soil erosion and the capability of the land has been maintained. However, land is sometimes devastated by land managers—not because of ignorance or stupidity but because of the social systems that keep farmers trapped in small plots of land, dependent on cash crops with low market prices and powerful merchants with a local monopoly on the collection of crops for sale in the market. Local farmers may well be aware of the causes of land degradation and attempt to combat it with fertilizers, mulching, and terracing. However, without real land reform, many peasants around the developing world are trapped in desperate circumstances reflecting the dynamics of the global economy and oppressive national and local social structures.
SYSTEMS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONSystems of agricultural production set their imprint on rural land use. Like manufacturing, agriculture is carried out according to two basic modes of production, peasant or precapitalist systems and capitalist, commodified systems. The major distinction between these is the labor commitment of the enterprise. In the peasant system, production comes from small units worked entirely, or almost entirely, by family labor. In the capitalist system, family farming is still widespread, but labor is a commodity to be hired and dismissed by the enterprise according to changes in the scale of organization, the degree of mechanization, and the level of market demand for products. In any geographic region, one system of production dominates the others. For example, capitalist agriculture dominates parts of South America, whereas peasant agriculture dominates other parts. Capitalist agriculture finds expression in a vast cattle ranching zone extending southwest from northeastern Brazil to Patagonia; in Argentina’s wheat-raising Pampa, which is similar to the U.S. Great Plains; in a mixed livestock and crop zone in Uruguay, southern Brazil, and south central Chile, which is comparable to the U.S. Corn Belt; in a Mediterranean agriculture zone in central Chile; and in a number of seaboard tropical plantations in Brazil, the Guianas, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru. Peasant agriculture dominates the rest of the continent. There is shifting cultivation in the Amazon Basin rainforest, rudimentary sedentary cultivation in the Andean plateau country from Colombia in the north to the Bolivian Altiplano in the south, and a wide strip of crop and livestock farming in eastern Brazil between the coastal plantations and livestock ranching zones.
Preindustrial AgricultureMost of the world’s farmers, including the people of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, practice subsistence agriculture on a preindustrial basis. These regions have several characteristics in common:
1. The majority of workers are engaged in agriculture instead of manufacturing or services.
2. Agricultural methods and practices are technologically primitive. Farms and plots are small in comparison with those of the developed world, labor is used intensively, and mechanization and fertilization are used only infrequently. The primary energy source is animate, that is, from living human and animal muscle.
3. Agricultural produce that is harvested on the farms is used primarily for direct consumption. The family, or the extended family, subsists on the agricultural products from the farm. Although in certain years surpluses may be produced, this is rarely the case. There are several major categories of subsistence agriculture: peasant-based agriculture; shifting cultivation in the tropics; pastoral nomadism in North Africa and the Middle East; and intensive subsistence agriculture in South and East Asia, where rice is grown.
PEASANT MODE OF PRODUCTION 
Peasant agriculture occurs entirely in developing countries where market relations have not fully encompassed all domains of economic life. It is relatively labor-intensive, involving endless hours of backbreaking toil. In such societies, the bulk of the population lives in rural areas. Farmers are small-scale producers who invest little in mechanical equipment or chemicals. They are interested mainly in using what they produce rather than in exchanging it to buy things that they need. Food and fiber are exchanged, particularly through interaction with capitalist agriculture at the global, national, and local scales, but farm families consume much of what they produce. To obtain the outputs required to be self-supporting, peasant farmers are frequently willing to raise inputs of labor to very high levels, especially in crowded areas where land is rarely available. Highly intensive peasant agriculture occurs in the extensive rice fields of South, East, and Southeast Asia. Most of the paddies are prepared by ox-drawn plow, and the rice is planted and harvested by hand—millions of hands. Another example of the peasant mode of production exists in the semiarid zone of East Africa. This zone includes the interior of Tanzania, northeast Uganda, and the area surrounding the moist high-potential heartland of Kenya. As in most parts of the developing world, peasant agriculture in this region has been complicated by the colonial and postcolonial experience. People earn a living by combining several activities. They eat their crops and livestock and sell or exchange agricultural surpluses at markets. They grow cash, or export, crops such as cotton. They maintain beehives in the bush and sell part of the honey and wax. They brew and sell beer. They hunt, fish, and collect wild fruits. They earn income by cutting firewood, making charcoal, delivering water, and carrying sand for use in construction. Some of them have small shops or are tailors. Most important, people sell their labor, both short term and long term, nearby and far away. To farm and herd successfully in the semiarid zone, land managers must meet certain requirements set by the environment and by the nature of crops and animals. Livestock requires water, graze, salt, and protection from disease and predators. To meet these needs day after day, year after year, land managers must have considerable skill and knowledge. They must know a great deal not only about the ability of animals to withstand physiological stress but also about environmental management—which grass to save for late grazing and where and when to establish dry-season wells to enable the stock to withstand the rigor of the daily journey between water and graze. With respect to crops, land managers must know about plant-moisture and nutrient needs. They must also be sensitive to the variability of rainfall. Most of the time, this system of agriculture in East Africa provides peasants with an adequate and varied food supply. In bad times, there are mechanisms for sharing hardship and loss so that those farmers who are hardest hit can usually rebuild their livelihoods after bad times end. However, the peasant mode of production has been forced to adjust to pressures from governments and the world economy during colonial and postcolonial periods, including competing with subsidized grain imports from countries such as the United States.
SHIFTING CULTIVATION Shifting cultivation, slashand-burn, or swidden agriculture is practiced in three main tropical rainforest areas of the world: (1) the South American Amazon region; (2) central Africa; and (3) Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and New Guinea. Rainfall is heavy in these regions, vegetation is thick, and soils are relatively poor in quality. When shifting cultivation is practiced, the people of a permanent village clear a field adjacent to their settlement by slashing vegetation (Figure 6.6). After the field is cleared with axes, knives, and machetes, the remaining stumps are burned. Daily rain returns the ash and nutrients to the soil, temporarily fertilizing it. (Because of this clearing technique, shifting cultivation is sometimes called slash-and-burn agriculture.) The field is used for several years. At the end of this time, the soil is depleted, and the village turns elsewhere to clear another field. Eventually, the forest vegetation again takes over, and the area is refoliated. The soil is thus allowed to replenish itself. Swidden agriculture survives in areas of the humid tropics that have low-potential environmental productivity and low population pressure. Under ideal conditions, this form of agriculture leaves much of the original vegetation intact. Farmers make small, discontinuous clearings in forests. They cut down some trees, burn the debris, and prepare the soil for a variety of crops—groundnuts, rice, taro, sweet potato. Because no fertilizer is used, soil nutrients are quickly depleted. Using hoes or knives, farmers plant the fields by hand with tubers or seeds: An indentation is made in the soil, a stem of a plant is submerged or a seed is dropped into a hole, and soil is pushed over the opening by hand. Mechanization and animals are not used for plowing or for harvesting. The most productive farming occurs in the second or third year after burning. Following this, surrounding vegetation rapidly regenerates, weeds grow, and soil productivity dwindles. The plot, sometimes called a swidden or milpa, is abandoned; then a new site is selected nearby. Usually, the village does not permanently relocate. The villagers commonly return to the abandoned field after 6 to 12 years, by which time the soil has regained enough nutrients to grow crops again. Except on steep slopes, where soil erosion can be a serious problem, shifting cultivation can be a sustainable system of agriculture. It allows previous plots to regenerate natural growth. However, shifting cultivation can lead to degradation when an increasing population demands too much of the land, reducing the fallow period. The predominant crops grown in shifting agricultural areas include corn and manioc (cassava) in South America, rice in Southeast Asia, and sorghum and millet in Africa. In some regions, yams, sugarcane, and other vegetables are also grown. The patchwork of a swidden is quite complex and seemingly chaotic. On one swidden, a variety of crops can be grown, including those just mentioned, as well as potatoes, rice, corn, yams, mangoes, cotton, beans, bananas, pineapples, and others, each in a clump or small area within the swidden. Only 5% of the world’s population engages in shifting cultivation today. This low percentage is not surprising because tropical rainforests are not highly populated areas. However, shifting cultivation occupies approximately 25% of the world’s land surface and therefore is an important type of agriculture. The amount of land devoted to this type of agriculture is decreasing because governments in these regions deem shifting cultivation to be economically unimportant. Consequently, governments in developing countries are selling and leasing land to commercial interests that destroy the tropical hardwoods and rainforests.
PASTORAL NOMADISM
Shifting cultivation and pastoral nomadism can be classified as extensive subsistence agriculture. Areas in which pastoral nomadism is practiced include North Africa and the Middle East, the eastern plateau areas of China and Central Asia, and eastern Africa’s Kenya and Tanzania. Only 15 million people are pastoral nomads, but they occupy 20% of the earth’s land area, areas that are climatically opposite to those of shifting cultivators. The lands of the pastoral nomads are dry; usually less than 10 inches of rain accumulate per year, and typical agriculture is normally impossible, except in oases areas. Instead of depending on crops as most other farmers do, nomads depend on animal herds for their sustenance. Everything that they need and use is carried with them from one forage area to another. Tents are constructed of goats’ hair, and milk, clothing, shoes, and implements are produced from the animals. Pastoral nomads consume mostly meat and grain. Sometimes, in exchange for the meat, other needed goods are obtained from sedentary farmers in marginal lands near the nomads’ herding regions. It is common for pastoral nomads to farm areas near oases or within floodplains that they occupy for a short period of the year. Nomadic parties usually include 6 to 10 families who travel in a group, carrying bags of grain for sustenance during the drier portions of the year. A cyclical pattern of migration is entrenched in the nomadic way of life, and it lasts for generations. Pastoral nomads are not wandering tribes; they follow a 12-month cycle in which lands most available for forage are cyclically revisited in a pattern that exhibits strong territoriality and observance of the rights of adjacent tribes. The exact migration pattern of today’s pastoral nomads has developed from a precise geographic knowledge of the region’s physical landforms and environmental provision. Nomads must select animals for their herds that can withstand drought and provide the basic necessities of the herdsmen. The camel is the quintessential animal of the nomad because it is strong, can travel for weeks without water, and can move rapidly while carrying a large load. The goat is the favorite small animal because it requires little water, is tough, and can forage off the least green plants. Sheep are slow moving and require more water, but they provide other necessities: wool and mutton. Small tribes need between 25 and 60 goats and sheep and between 10 and 25 camels to sustain themselves. Before the railroad and telegraph, pastoral nomads were the communication agents of the desert regions, carrying with them innovations and information. This is no longer the case, as nomadic societies have fallen before the territorial imperatives of the nation-state and its fixed boundaries. However, nomadic herding remains because these vast dry areas of the world cannot be used for other economic activity. Furthermore, government attempts to settle pastoral nomads have met with little success. In the future, pastoral nomads will be allowed only on lands that do not have energy resources or precious metals beneath the surface or on lands that cannot be easily irrigated from nearby rivers, lakes, or groundwater aquifers. In any case, the number of pastoral nomads is declining.
INTENSIVE SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE Intensive subsistence agriculture is practiced by large populations living in East, South, and Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America. Whereas shifting cultivation and pastoral nomadism are extensive low-density, marginal operations, intensive subsistence agriculture, as the term implies, is a higher-intensity type of agriculture in the majority of the densely populated developing areas of the world. Rice is the predominant crop because of its high levels of carbohydrates and protein. Most farmers involved in intensive subsistence rice agriculture use every available piece of land, however fragmented, around their villages. Most often, a farm encompasses only a few acres. Intensive subsistence agriculture is characterized by several features:
1. Most of the work is done by hand, with all family members involved. Occasionally farm animals are used, such as water buffalo or oxen. Almost no mechanization is involved because of lack of capital to purchase such equipment and because plots are tiny.
2. Plots of land are extremely small by Western standards.Almost no piece of land is wasted. Even roads through agricultural regions of intensive subsistence are made narrow so that all cultivatable areas can be used.
3. The physiological density (i.e., the number of people that each acre of land can support) is very high.
4. Principal regions that are cultivated are river valleys and irrigated fields in low-lying, moist regions in the middle latitudes. Because rice is a crop that has a high yield per acre and is rich in nutrients, it is a favorite in intensive subsistence agricultural regions. First, the field is plowed with a sharpened wooden pole that is pulled by oxen. Next, the field is flooded with water and planted with rice seedlings by hand. Another method is to spread dry seeds over a large area by hand. When the rice is mature, having developed for three-fourths of its life underwater, it is harvested from the rice paddy. To separate the husks from the rice itself, the farmers thrash the rice by beating it on a hard surface or by trampling it underfoot. Sometimes it is even poured on heavily traveled roads. The chaff is thus removed from the seeds, and sometimes the wind blows the lightweight material far from the pile of rice itself, a process known as winnowing. Some year-round, tropical, moist areas of the world permit double cropping. This means that more than one crop can be produced from the same plot within the year. Occasionally in wet regions, two rice crops are grown, but more frequently a rice crop and a different crop, which requires less water, are produced. The field crop is produced in the drier season on nonirrigated land. In the higher latitudes of East Asia, rice is mixed with other crops and may not be the dominant crop. In western India and the northern China plain, wheat and barley are the dominant crops, with oats, millet, corn, sorghum, soybeans, cotton, flax, hemp, and tobacco also produced.
Problems of Subsistence AgriculturalistsSubsistence agriculture is subjected to variations in soil quality, availability of rain from year to year, and, in general, environmental conditions that can harm crop-production levels and endanger life. In addition, subsistence agriculturalists lack tools, implements, hybrid seeds, fertilizer, and mechanization that developed nations have had for nearly 100 years. With such drawbacks, subsistence agriculturalists can barely provide for their families, and net yields have not increased substantially for many generations. These families do not have enough capital to purchase the necessary equipment to improve their standard of living. Finally, all too often, developing countries turn to their limited sources of export revenues to generate the cash flow needed for infrastructure, public services, and the military. They must produce something that they can sell in the world market. Often, they sell mineral resources, foodstuffs, and nonmineral energy fuels. Most frequently, these countries sell cash crops on the world market to generate foreign revenue; thus, the food is not used to sustain their own population. Another category of agricultural products that can generate revenue is nonfood or not-nourishing crops, such as sugar, hemp, jute, rubber, tea, tobacco, coffee, and a growing harvest of cotton to satisfy the world’s need for fabric and denim. All of these commodities, however, command very low prices on the global market. How can impoverished nations feed themselves when a large proportion of their agricultural productivity and acreage is devoted to nonfood crops? This is the plight of many African, South American, Central American, and Asian countries today. As a result, sometimes alternative sources of income are inviting, even if they are illegal, such as cocoa or opium.
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE
Commercial agricultural areas dominated by capitalist social relations include the United States and Canada, Argentina and portions of Brazil, Chile, Europe, Russia and Central Asia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and portions of China. Agriculture in the United States epitomizes the contemporary capitalist system of food production. The American agricultural system developed in the nineteenth century as part of the unfolding of the European “frontier” across North America. Railroads and steamships dramatically lowered transport costs to the markets along the East Coast, and agricultural trading centers and ports, such as Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans grew rapidly. By the turn of the century, the United States had become a major supplier of wheat and other commodities to Europe. The only other major producer, Russia, effectively withdrew from world markets following the revolution there in 1917, leaving the United States as the major supplier. Consequently, the vast agricultural region stretching across the Ohio and Mississippi river basins into the Great Plains, and extending into central Canada, became the core of the North American food-producing system. American agriculture today is a huge and very productive industry dominated by a handful of large agribusiness firms. Agribusiness, dominated by such giant food companies as ConAgra, Bunge, Cargill, Dole, Nabisco, General Mills, Kraft General Foods, Hunt-Wesson, Archer Daniels Midland, and United Brands, controls the whole food chain from “seedling to supermarket.” Whereas the popular imagination clings to the stereotype of the small family farmer, in reality most American agriculture is organized around the needs of a small handful of large firms, which generally do not own the farmland but control the food production and processing (e.g., canning), distribution, price and cost, and marketing. The concept that describes the food companies’ control of the production process from raw material to final product is vertical integration, which is common in capital-intensive production. Agribusiness is extremely capital-intensive and energy-intensive. Farmers rely on copious quantities of chemicals, tractors, harvesters, airplanes, and other equipment—most of it very sophisticated, computer controlled, and expensive—to keep labor inputs low and productivity levels high. Only 2% of the U.S. labor force is employed in agriculture, and it not only feeds the other 98% of the populace but exports vast amounts of food as well. The very high per capita productivity has resulted in long-term rural depopulation. For example, the use of tractors worldwide is a measure of the capital-intensity of agricultural production: Countries with highly commodified agricultural systems rely extensively on this technology, freeing people from the farm, whereas in developing nations with a peasant-based system of agriculture, tractors are relatively uncommon. The importance of corporate farming is growing in market gardening, which is sometimes called truck farming. Modern truck farms specialize in intensively cultivated fruits, vegetables, and vines, and they depend on migratory seasonal farm laborers to harvest their crops. In the United States, California is the epicenter of fruit and vegetable farms, although they are widespread in Florida as well. Agribusiness has also extended livestock farming immensely; it has mechanized the raising and slaughter of cattle, often under inhumane conditions. Other examples of modern livestock production include poultry ranches and egg factories. At one time, livestock farming was associated with a combination of crop and animal raising on the same farm. In recent years, livestock farming has become highly specialized. An important aspect of this specialization has been the growth of factory-like feedlots, which raise thousands of cattle and hogs on purchased feed, generating huge quantities of animal waste. Feedlots are common in the western and southern states, in part because winters there are mild. These feedlots raise more than 60% of the beef cattle in the United States. Thus, corporate agriculture is an industry similar to the production of other goods such as cars. Agriculture’s major backward linkages—its purchases from other sectors—include petroleum and machinery; notably, labor is only a small part of the production costs, given how capital-intensive the sector is. The forward linkages of this sector—its sales to other parts of the economy—include the food processing sector and meat production; a large share of cereals, especially corn, are grown for animal feed. Modern American farming is quick to respond to new developments, such as new production techniques. Consequently, farmers with sizable investments of money, materials, and energy can create drastic changes in land-use patterns. For example, farmers in the low-rainfall areas of the western United States have converted large areas of grazing land to forage and grass production with the use of center-pivot irrigation systems (Figure 6.11). Other farmers grow sugar beets and potatoes in western oases through federally subsidized water projects. American corporate farming is also extending overseas to become a worldwide food-system model. Poultry-raising operations in Argentina, Pakistan, Thailand, and Taiwan are increasingly similar to those in Alabama or Maryland. Enormous, politically well-connected enterprises such as United Brands, Del Monte, Archer Daniels Midland, and Unilever divert food production in developing countries toward population is directly engaged in farming, and the average is 60% overall. Today, U.S. farmers on average produce enough food for themselves and 70 other families. In 2008, the United States had approximately 1.7 million farms, compared with 5.7 million in 1950. This reduction in the number of farm families as a percentage of the population is a result of waves of corporate consolidation and mergers and the high cost of equipment, low prices, or high interest rates that drive families off the farms. Farming is difficult, often dangerous work, and low crop prices can be ruinous. Meanwhile, the opportunity for a college education and higher-paying occupations in the cities have long lured farm children off the land. One serious problem is the encroachment of metropolitan areas onto the best farmland, which has become directly adjacent to urban areas through the expansion of housing subdivisions and shopping centers. Suburban sprawl, brought on by interstate highways that reduce the commute and penetrate into the countryside, has usurped viable topsoil and farmland around many metropolitan areas in the United States as well as around many European cities.
Machinery and Other Resources in FarmingThe second aspect unique to commercial agriculture, besides the small percentage of farmers in the population, is the heavy reliance on expensive machinery—tractors, combines, trucks, diesel pumps, and heavy farm equipment—all amply fueled by petroleum and gasoline resources, to produce the large output of farm products. To this miracle seeds have been added that are hardier than their predecessors and produce more impressive tonnages. Commercial agriculture is also fertilizer-intense. Improvements in transportation to the market have resulted in less spoilage. Products arrive at the canning and food-processing centers more rapidly than they did earlier. By 1850, many American farms were well connected to cities by rail transportation. More recently, the motor truck has supplanted rail transportation, and the advent of the refrigerator car and the refrigerator truck meant that freshness was preserved. Cattle also arrive at packing houses by motor truck as fat as when they left the farm, unlike the mid-nineteenth century, when long cattle drives were the order of the day, connecting cattle-fattening areas in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado with the Union Pacific rail line stretching from St. Louis to Kansas City to Denver. Agricultural experiment stations are now located in every state and are usually affiliated with land-grant universities. These stations have made great improvements in agricultural techniques, not only in improved fertilizers and hybrid plant seeds but also in hardier animal breeds and new and better insecticides and herbicides, which have reduced pestilence. In addition, local and state government farm advisors can provide information about the latest techniques, innovations, and prices so that the farmer can make wise decisions concerning what should be produced, when it should be produced, and how much should be produced.
Types of Commercial AgricultureWe can divide commercial agriculture into six main categories: mixed crop and livestock farming, dairy farming, grain farming, cattle ranching, Mediterranean cropping, and horticulture and fruit farming.
MIXED CROP AND LIVESTOCK FARMING Mixed crop and livestock farming is the principal type of commercial agriculture, and it is found in Europe, Russia, Ukraine, North America, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. The primary characteristic of mixed crop and livestock farming is that the main source of revenue is livestock, especially beef cattle and hogs. In addition, income is produced from milk, eggs, veal, and poultry. Although the majority of farmlands are devoted to the production of crops such as corn, most of the crops are fed to the cattle. Cattle fattening is a way of intensifying the value of agricultural products and reducing bulk. Because of the developed world’s preference for meat as a major food source, mixed crop and livestock farmers have fared well during the past 100 years. In developed nations, the livestock farmer maintains soil fertility by using a system of crop rotation in which different crops are planted in successive years. Each type of crop adds different nutrients to the soil. The fields become more efficient and naturally replenish themselves with these nutrients. Farmers today use the four-field rotation system, wherein one field grows a cereal, the second field grows a root crop, the third field grows clover as forage for animals, and the fourth field is fallow, more or less resting the soil for that year. consumers in developed countries.
U.S. Commercial Agriculture: Crops and RegionsThe main characteristic of commercial agriculture is that it is produced for sale off the farm, at the market. Following are some of the characteristics of commercial agriculture:
1. Populations fed by commercial agriculture are urban populations engaged in other types of economic activity, such as manufacturing, the services, and information processing.
2. Only a small proportion of the population is engaged in agriculture.
3. Machinery, fertilizers, and high-yielding seeds are used extensively, with high energy inputs.
4. Farms are extremely large, and the trend is toward even larger farms.
5. Agricultural produce from commercial agriculture is integrated with other agribusiness, and a vertical integration exists that stretches from the farm to the table.
Commercial Agriculture and the Number of FarmersThe percentage of laborers in developed countries working in commercial agriculture is less than 5% overall. In contrast, in some portions of the developing world where intensive subsistence agriculture is practiced, 90% of the population is directly engaged in farming, and the average is 60% overall. Today, U.S. farmers on average produce enough food for themselves and 70 other families. In 2008, the United States had approximately 1.7 million farms, compared with 5.7 million in 1950. This reduction in the number of farm families as a percentage of the population is a result of waves of corporate consolidation and mergers and the high cost of equipment, low prices, or high interest rates that drive families off the farms. Farming is difficult, often dangerous work, and low crop prices can be ruinous. Meanwhile, the opportunity for a college education and higher-paying occupations in the cities have long lured farm children off the land. One serious problem is the encroachment of metropolitan areas onto the best farmland, which has become directly adjacent to urban areas through the expansion of housing subdivisions and shopping centers. Suburban sprawl, brought on by interstate highways that reduce the commute and penetrate into the countryside, has usurped viable topsoil and farmland around many metropolitan areas in the United States as well as around many European cities.
Machinery and Other Resources in Farming
The second aspect unique to commercial agriculture, besides the small percentage of farmers in the population, is the heavy reliance on expensive machinery—tractors, combines, trucks, diesel pumps, and heavy farm equipment—all amply fueled by petroleum and gasoline resources, to produce the large output of farm products. To this miracle seeds have been added that are hardier than their predecessors and produce more impressive tonnages. Commercial agriculture is also fertilizer-intense. Improvements in transportation to the market have resulted in less spoilage. Products arrive at the canning and food-processing centers more rapidly than they did earlier. By 1850, many American farms were well connected to cities by rail transportation. More recently, the motor truck has supplanted rail transportation, and the advent of the refrigerator car and the refrigerator truck meant that freshness was preserved. Cattle also arrive at packing houses by motor truck as fat as when they left the farm, unlike the mid-nineteenth century, when long cattle drives were the order of the day, connecting cattle-fattening areas in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado with the Union Pacific rail line stretching from St. Louis to Kansas City to Denver. Agricultural experiment stations are now located in every state and are usually affiliated with land-grant universities. These stations have made great improvements in agricultural techniques, not only in improved fertilizers and hybrid plant seeds but also in hardier animal breeds and new and better insecticides and herbicides, which have reduced pestilence. In addition, local and state government farm advisors can provide information about the latest techniques, innovations, and prices so that the farmer can make wise decisions concerning what should be produced, when it should be produced, and how much should be produced.
Types of Commercial AgricultureWe can divide commercial agriculture into six main categories: mixed crop and livestock farming, dairy farming, grain farming, cattle ranching, Mediterranean cropping, and horticulture and fruit farming.
MIXED CROP AND LIVESTOCK FARMING Mixed crop and livestock farming is the principal type of commercial agriculture, and it is found in Europe, Russia, Ukraine, North America, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. The primary characteristic of mixed crop and livestock farming is that the main source of revenue is livestock, especially beef cattle and hogs. In addition, income is produced from milk, eggs, veal, and poultry. Although the majority of farmlands are devoted to the production of crops such as corn, most of the crops are fed to the cattle. Cattle fattening is a way of intensifying the value of agricultural products and reducing bulk. Because of the developed world’s preference for meat as a major food source, mixed crop and livestock farmers have fared well during the past 100 years. In developed nations, the livestock farmer maintains soil fertility by using a system of crop rotation in which different crops are planted in successive years. Each type of crop adds different nutrients to the soil. The fields become more efficient and naturally replenish themselves with these nutrients. Farmers today use the four-field rotation system, wherein one field grows a cereal, the second field grows a root crop, the third field grows clover as forage for animals, and the fourth field is fallow, more or less resting the soil for that year. Most cropping systems in the United States rely on corn because it is the most efficient for fattening cattle. American corn is highly subsidized by the federal government, largely owing to the political clout of agribusiness, and is thus produced in much larger volumes for lower prices than would be the case if it were a “free market.” Some corn is consumed by the general population in the form of corn on the cob, corn oil, or margarine, but most is fed to cattle or hogs, even though cows evolved to eat grass, not corn. Corn is widely used in corn sweeteners in a large variety of processed foods, including soft drinks and ketchup. The second most important crop in mixed crop and livestock farming regions of central North America and the eastern Great Plains is the soybean. The soybean has more than 100 uses, but it is used mainly for animal feed. In China and Japan, tofu is made from soybean milk and is used as a major food source high in protein and low in fat.
DAIRY FARMING Dairy farming accounts for the most farm acreage in the northeastern United States and north-western Europe and accounts for 20% of the total output by value of commercial agriculture. Ninety percent of the world’s milk supply is produced in these few areas of the world. Most milk is consumed locally because of its weight and perishability. Some dairy farms produce butter and cheese as well as milk. In general, the farther the farm is from an urban area, the more expensive the transportation of fluid milk, and the greater proportion of production in more high-value-added commodities, such as cheese and butter. For example, the Swiss discovered ways of transforming their milk products into high-value-added chocolates, cheeses, and spreads that are distributed worldwide. These processed products are not only lighter but also less perishable. On the other hand, in the United States, the proximity of farms to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, on the East Coast, and to Chicago and Los Angeles in the Midwest and West, means that these farms primarily produce liquid milk. Farms throughout the remaining areas of the United States primarily produce butter and cheese. Worldwide, remote locations, such as New Zealand, for example, devote three-fourths of their dairy farms to cheese and butter production, whereas three-fourths of the farms in Britain, with a much higher population density at close proximities, produce fluid milk. Dairy farms are relatively labor-intensive because cows must be milked twice a day. Most of this milking is done with automatic milking machines. However, the cows still must be herded into the barn and washed, the milking machines must be attached and disassembled, and the cows must be herded back out and fed. The difficulty for the dairy farmer is to keep the cows milked and fed during winter, when forage is not readily available and must be stored.
GRAIN FARMING Commercial grain farms are usually in drier territories that are not conducive to dairy farming or mixed crop and livestock farming. Most grain, unlike the products of mixed crop and livestock farming, is produced for sale directly to consumers. Only a few places in the world can support large grain-farming operations. These areas include China, the United States, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, and Australia. Wheat is the primary crop used to make flour and bread. Other important grains include barley, oats, rye, and sorghum. These grains are not particularly perishable and can be shipped long distances. Wheat is the most highly valued grain per unit area and is the most important for world food production. Grain yield and production increased markedly in developing
countries between 1970 and 2005, while cropland area has increased only slightly. However, production per capita is much more disappointing in developing countries, particularly in Africa. But the world’s food-producing system, however constrained and imperfect, has allowed the global food supply to keep pace with world population increases, denying, or at least forestalling, the Malthusian prophecy. Wheat is the leading international agricultural commodity transported among nations. The United States and Canada are the leading export nations for grains and together account for 50% of wheat exports worldwide. The North American wheat-producing areas have been appropriately labeled the world’s breadbasket because they still provide the major source of food to many deficit areas, including several starving countries in Africa. The United States is the world’s only agricultural superpower and plays a unique role in the global food-production system. Agricultural exports generate more than $110 billion in export revenues annually, and the United States exports 20% of all food traded internationally. As with other economic sectors, agriculture has become thoroughly globalized; for example, farmers in Nebraska and Kansas are well aware that next year’s revenues will be shaped by weather and political events in markets in Europe and Asia. In North America, the Spring Wheat Belt is west of the mixed crop and livestock farming area of the Midwest and is centered in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Saskatchewan. Major cities in the Great Plains, such as Minneapolis and St. Paul, were often established as centers of flour milling and distribution. Another region, just south of the Wheat Belt, is the Winter Wheat Belt, which is centered in Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Because winters are harsh in the Spring Wheat Belt, the seeds would freeze in the ground, so, instead, spring wheat is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall; the fields are fallow in the winter. Winter wheat, however, is planted in the fall and moisture accumulation from snow helps fertilize the seed. It sprouts in the spring and is harvested in early summer. Like corn-producing regions, wheat-producing areas are heavily mechanized and require high inputs of energy resources. Today, the most important machine in wheat-producing regions is the combine, which not only reaps but also threshes and cleans the wheat. Large storage devices called grain elevators are a prominent landscape feature as one traverses the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. In part, these reflect the enormous surpluses that farmers have accrued, to some degree due to government subsidies.
CATTLE RANCHING 
Cattle ranching is practiced in developed areas of the world where crop farming is inappropriate because of aridity and lack of rainfall. Cattle ranching is an extensive agricultural pursuit because many acres are needed to raise cattle. In some instances, cattle are penned near cities and forage is trucked to cattle-fattening pens called feedlots. Major cities grew up across the western United States partly because of the services provided by their slaughterhouses and stockyards. Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, and St. Louis are examples. If a cattle farmer could get a steer to one of these cities, it was worth 10 times as much as it was worth on the range. Early American ranchers were not as concerned about owning territory as they were about owning heads of cattle. Consequently, the range was open and the herds grazed as they went toward market. Later, farmers bought up the land and established their perimeters with barbed-wire fences. Until about 1887, the ranchers cut the barbed-wire fences and continued to move their herds about wherever they pleased. However, after that point, the farmers seemed to win the battle, and ranchers were forced to switch from long cattle drives and wide territories of rangeland to stationary ranching. The land was divided according to the availability of water and the amount of rainfall. Farmers used the land that was productive for farm crops, such as grains and wheat, whereas the ranchers received the land that was too dry for farming. Ironically, given the frequent hostility of cattle ranchers to the state in the past, today 60% of cattle grazing occurs on land leased from the U.S. government, with ranchers paying fees well below market rates (a circumstance that again defies the conventional myth of the “free market”). Today, ranches in Texas and the West cover thousands of acres because the semiarid conditions mean that several acres alone are required to raise one head of cattle. Some extremely large ranches are owned by meat-packing companies that can fatten the cattle, slaughter them, and package the meat all on the same ranch. South America, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil all have significant cattle-ranching industries. These regions, as well as Australia and New Zealand, followed a similar pattern of cattle-ranching development. First, cattle were grazed on large, open, government tracts with little regard for ranch boundaries. Later, when a conflict with farming interests occurred, cattle ranches moved to drier areas. When irrigation first began to be used in the 1930s and 1940s, farms expanded their territory and ranchers moved to even drier areas and centered much of their herds on feedlots near railroads or highways leading toward the markets. Today, ranching worldwide has become part of a vertically integrated agribusiness meat-processing industry.
MEDITERRANEAN CROPPING Mediterranean regions of the world grow specialized crops, depending on soil and moisture conditions. These regions include the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, southern California, central Chile, South Africa, and southern Australia. In these regions, summers are dry and hot and winters are mild and wet. The Mediterranean Sea countries produce olives and grapes. Two-thirds of the world’s wine is produced in Mediterranean Europe, especially Spain, France, and Italy. In addition, these countries and Greece produce the world’s largest supply of olive oil. In California, the crop mix is slightly different because of consumer demand and preferences. Most of the land devoted to Mediterranean agriculture is taken up by citrus crops, principally oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. Unfortunately for Mediterranean farmers, these areas of the world are some of the most prized for their climates. Northern Europeans turned many Mediterranean Sea areas into tourist rivieras. No discussion is necessary to describe the land-use changes associated with the growth of Southern California. Burgeoning suburban developments around major cities, especially Los Angeles, are rapidly dwindling our Mediterranean agricultural lands. In Chile, 90% of the population lives in the Mediterranean lands in the central one-third of the country, centered on Santiago.
HORTICULTURE AND FRUIT FARMING Because of consumer preferences, purchasing power, and a severe winter season, there is a tremendous demand in U.S. East Coast cities for fruits and vegetables not grown locally. Shoppers in Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Boston pay dearly for truck farm fruits and vegetables, such as apples, asparagus, cabbage, cherries, lettuce, mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes. Consequently, a horticulture and fruit-farming industry exists as close as possible to this portion of the United States as temperature and soil conditions allow. Stretching from southern Virginia through the eastern half of North Carolina and South Carolina to coastal Georgia and Florida is the Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Belt. This is an intensively developed agricultural region with a high value per acre. The products are shipped daily to the northeastern cities for direct consumption or for fruit and vegetable packing and freezing. As in the case of Mediterranean agriculture and subtropical cropping in southern California, the Atlantic fruit and vegetable horticulture industry relies heavily on inexpensive labor. In California, the laborers are primarily from Mexico and Central America and often enter the United States illegally. On the Atlantic Coast, the laborers are primarily from the Caribbean and their immigration status is also often questionable. Farm workers often work under brutally exploitative conditions for extremely low wages, typically well below minimum wage. Inexpensive labor is the major way that specialized agriculturalists maintain profits in areas under pressure from urban growth and expansion. Often illiterate and politically powerless, the laborers suffer at the hands of unscrupulous employers. They may be cheated out of their pay, exposed to dangerous pesticides, and not be able to afford a place to live. In part, our cheap fruits and vegetables come at the expense of human misery.
By Frederick P. Stutz (San Diego State University) and Barney Warf (University of Kansas) in "The World Economy" - geography, business, development, Prentice Hall U.S.A,2012, excerpts 157-177. Adapted and illustrated (using book graphs) to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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