Chapter 10

Agriculture
Key Issue 1
Where did Agriculture
Originate?

Origins of Agriculture

This chapter deals with the major primary sector economic

activity-agriculture.
The origins of and diffusion of agriculture are considered
first. Farming varies around the world because of a variety
of cultural and physical environmental factors.
Agriculture is very different in less and more developed
regions.
In less developed regions, dominated by subsistence
agriculture, farm products are usually consumed near to
where they are produced.
Commercial farming is the norm in more developed
countries and farmers sell what they produce. Farmers
face numerous problems in each type of region.

Origins of Agriculture cont.

Prior to the invention of agriculture, humans lived as nomadic

hunters and gatherers, traveling in small groups and collecting
food daily.
Over thousands of years plant cultivation evolved through a
combination of accident and deliberate experiment.
In this way, about 10,000 years ago, people started to practice
agriculture, the deliberate modification of the Earths surface
through the cultivation of plants and domestication of animals, for
sedentary food production.
The word cultivate means to care for, and a crop is any plant
cultivated by people.
According to the geographer Carl Sauer, there were two initial
types of cultivation. The first was vegetative planting, which is
the reproduction of plants by direct cloning from existing plants.
Seed agriculture came later; this is the reproduction of plants
through seeds. This is practiced by most farmers today.

Location of Agricultural Hearths

There were probably a number of agricultural hearths for

both vegetative planting and seed agriculture.
Sauer believes that vegetative planting originated in
Southeast Asia and diffused from there to other parts of
Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and southern Europe.
There have been many other independent vegetative
hearths in west Africa and South America.
Sauer identified numerous hearths for seed agriculture, in
Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Agriculture had multiple
hearths because, to a certain extent, the physical
environment determines the food that will be produced.

Classifying Agricultural Regions

In subsistence agriculture, found in less

developed countries (LDCs), farmers produce
goods to provide for themselves.
Commercial agriculture, found in more developed
countries (MDCs), is the production of food for
competitive, free market sale.
This type of agriculture emerged as a result of
increased farming technology that was developed
during the Second Agricultural Revolution in the
years preceding the Industrial Revolution in 18th
century Europe.
In planned agricultural economies, such as
communist countries, the government controls
every phase of agricultural production.

Classifying Agricultural Regions

cont.

Five principal features distinguish commercial from subsistence agriculture.

(1) The purpose of farming is different in LDCs and MDCs.
(2) Agriculture in LDCs is more labor-intensive than the capital-intensive
agriculture which is the norm in MDCs. Thus there will always be a higher
percentage of the labor force involved in agriculture in the developing
world.
(3) Related to the percentage of farmers in the labor force, agriculture in
developed countries involves more machinery and technology.
(4) Farm size is larger in commercial agriculture, especially in the U.S. and
Canada. The loss of very productive farmland, known as prime agricultural
land, is an increasing problem in the U.S. because of urban sprawl.
(5) In commercial agriculture there is a close relationship between
agriculture and other businesses. This is not the case in subsistence
agriculture. In developed countries the system of commercial farming is
called agribusiness because farming is integrated into a large food
production industry.