The Agricultural World History of Agriculture Diffusion of Agriculture Types of Agriculture

Mediterranean agriculture Based on wheat and barley cultivation in the rainy season Drought-resistant vine and tree crops— grapes, olives, and fig Livestock herding—sheep and goats Communal herds pastured on rocky mountain slopes Farmers can reap nearly all of life’s necessities Wool and leather for clothing Bread, beverages, fruit, milk, cheese, and meat

Crete

Market gardening Also known as truck farming Located in developed countries Specialize in intensively cultivated non-tropical fruits, vegetables, and vines Entire farm output is raised for sale rather than consumption on the farm Many depend on seasonal farm laborers Appear in most industrialized countries and are often near major urban centers Each district area concentrates on a single product Wine, table grapes, raisins Oranges, apples Lettuce, or potatoes

Mixed Crop & Livestock Farming Crop and animal raising is combined on the same farm Farmers raise and fatten cattle and hogs for slaughter One of the most developed fattening areas is the Corn Belt of the Midwestern United States

Mixed Crop & Livestock Farming The question of feedlot nutritional efficiency A cow must eat 21 pounds of grain to produce one pound of edible protein Protein lost through conversion from plant to meat could make up almost all the world’s present protein deficiency Today, food that feeds Americans would feed 1.5 billion at the consumption level of China Poorer countries such as Costa Rica and Brazil are destroying rain forests to fatten beef for America’s fast- food restaurants

Commercial grain farming Another market-oriented type of agriculture Farmers grow wheat or, less frequently, rice or corn Wheat belts Stretch through Australia America’s Great Plains region The steppes of Ukraine The pampas of Argentina

Commercial grain farming Together, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine produce 35 percent of the world’s wheat Large family farms of 1000 acres or more in the American Great Plains Rice farms cover large areas of the Texas-Louisiana coastal plain and lowlands in Arkansas and California Commercial rice farmers sow grain from airplanes

Commercial grain farming Suitcase farming Innovation in the wheat belt of the northern Great Plains People who own and operate these farms do not live on the land People own several suitcase farms, south-to- north through the plains states Keep fleets of farm machinery, which they send north with crews to plant, fertilize, and harvest the wheat

Commercial grain farming Agribusinesses Highly mechanized, absentee-owned, large- scale operations Rapidly replacing the traditional American family farm United States governmental policies consistently favor agribusiness interests Family farm no longer of much consequence, especially in the grain lands

Commercial dairying In the large dairy belts, keeping dairy cows depends on large- scale use of pastures Northern United States from New England to the upper Midwest Western and northern Europe Southeastern Australia and northern New Zealand In colder areas, some acreage must be devoted to winter feed crops—hay Regionally, dairy products differ depending on closeness to markets If near large urban areas milk, which is more perishable, is usually produced New Zealanders, remote from world markets, produce butter

Livestock Ranching How livestock-raising differs from nomadic herding Livestock ranchers have fixed places of residence Operate as individuals rather than within a tribal organization Ranchers raise livestock for market on a large scale not for subsistence Typically of European ancestry rather than being an indigenous people Faced with the advance of farmers, nomadic herders have fallen back to areas climatically too harsh for crop raising

Livestock ranching Raise only cattle and sheep in large numbers Where ranchers specialize in cattle raising United States and Canada Tropical and subtropical Latin America, and warmer parts of Australia Mid-latitude ranchers in the Southern Hemisphere specialize in sheep Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina produce 70 percent of world’s export wool Sheep outnumber people 8 to 1 in Australia, and 16 to 1 in New Zealand