Rural Land Use

Von Thünen Model (1826)

a.Johann Heinrich von Thünen, a German farmer, created a agricultural land use model showing that commercial farmers choose which crops to cultivate and which animals to raise based on their distance from market (land costs) and their weight (transportation costs) b.Moving outwards for the city’s central marketplace, the farming activities change from intensive to extensive 1. Von Thünen Model (1826)

c.Farmers must combine two sets of monetary values to determine the most profitable crop: Value of the yield per unit (the crop has to sell for more than the land cost per unit) and the cost of transporting the goods to market Von Thünen Model (cont’d)

a.S = Selling price at market b.P + T = Production Cost + Transportation Cost 2) Therefore, where Net Profit = 0 is the distance from the market where it is no longer profitable to grow or raise that product 1) Formula: Profit = S - (P+T)

d. Von Thünen’s model is a series of concentric circles around the market city:

a)Fruits and vegetables b)Have to be the closest to the market because of quick spoilage and heavy weight/bulky mass c)Cost of production is high, so transportation has to be cheap 1) Market garden crops

a)High capital and labor investment but small amount of land b)High transportation costs due to dairy being highly perishable and needing refrigerated trucks for shipment c)Why as population has increased in the west, CA has become a dairy production center 2) Dairy farms

3) Forestry: High transportation cost of timber for fuel/construction because of weight

a)Deliberate adding of weight to cows and hogs to increase sale price b)Transportation costs are high because of weight of animals, but is offset by only bringing animals to the slaughterhouse several times a year 4) Livestock fattening

 Livestock is concentrated in a small area  Fed grains (usually corn) and hormones to prepare them for slaughter at a much more rapid rate than livestock raised grazing on ranches  Downsides: Runoff of waste => contamination of local watersheds; Overpowering foul smell for the surrounding countryside c) Feedlots (“Factory Farms”)

a)Long shelf life and relatively light to transport b)Can be harvested quickly because of massive combines, but a major capital investment (around $250,000 each) c)Grain has a long commodity chain (Farmer => Transportation company => Processor/Packager => Baker (possibly) => Consumer) so it has a large price increase from producer to consumer 5) Mixed grain farming

a)Uses the most land per farm but low labor and land costs, and infrequent transport b)Today most ranch cattle are free range tracked by GPS collars c)Much of the grazing land used in the US is government-owned 6) Livestock ranching

7) Outside of these zones is nonagricultural because the distance to market is so far that a farmer cannot productively or profitably sell products from there

1)There is only one central market 2)Land has uniform soil, climate, and terrain 3)All farmers have equal access to transportation regardless of zone e. Assumptions of von Thünen’s Model:

1)East Coast/SE: Orchards, vegetables, small farms 2)PA to WI: Dairy farming 3)Midwest: Mixed grain farming 4)Great Plains: Cattle ranching 5)Rocky Mts/Deserts: Nonagricultural 6)Pacific Coast: Market Gardening and Dairy (starts over because of distance from main market f. Von Thünen’s model in the US (since NYC is its largest market):

Rural Settlement Patterns

1)Villages are made up of individual farmsteads (house, barn, sheds, pens, and garden) 2)Most common form of agricultural settlements worldwide a. Nucleated settlement pattern: Clustered farm villages in rural areas

Nucleated rural settlement

b. Isolated/Dispersed settlement pattern: Dominant in Anglo-America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

c. Cadastral Pattern: Denotes property ownership lines

1) Metes and Bounds (Britain, Eastern US)

2) Township and range system (Midwest/West US, Canada)

3) Long-lot farms (Europe, The Americas settled by the French and Spanish)