Key Issue 1 Where did Agriculture Originate? 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 Earth’s 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.