Introduction to Agricultural Geography

Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines

Agriculture: the deliberate modification of Earth’s surface through the cultivation of plants and rearing of animals to obtain sustenance or economic gain.

Agriculture has been traditionally considered the dominant primary sector activity. How does the modern commercial farmer pictured above challenge this classification of agriculture as a purely primary sector activity?

It was him, he did it!About 200,000 years ago, we, (Homo sapiens) first appear in the

archeological record.

For the next 190,000 years (or about 95% of our history) we obtained our food through a kind of nomadism known as hunting and gathering.

Uncontacted Yonomami Village (Venezuela/Brazil border)

Surviving Hunter Gatherer Populations

Sadly, these last remaining hunter gatherers are too small, isolated, and politically weak stop the vicious stereotyping against them in the form of….

San and Bantu peoples of South Africa Australian Interior:

Aborigines

Amazonian Tribes

Inuit

Ouch!

To avoid further unhealthy evolution…

The Paleo Diet! (aka: “Eat like the hunter gatherer that you are!”)

Men probably did most of the hunting,and they did it well.

In fact, the Pleistocene overkill theory argues that after the end of the last ice age about

10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers caused the extinction of several large mammal

species, including the saber-toothed tiger, the woolly mammoth, and the giant ground sloth.

Deexinctable? The Siberian Woolly Mammoth Clone Project

Women probably did most of the gathering.

This means women were likely the first to cultivate plants and therefore the first to make the jump from harvesting wild plants to planting them purposefully to be harvested later. In other words, women probably played the major role in inventing agriculture.

But when and where did this so called First Agricultural (aka Neolithic Revolution) first take place?

All contemporary discussions (and most AP HG questions!) about the origins of agriculture begin with Carl Sauer's seminal work, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, published in 1952.

Where else did we run into Carl Sauer in this course?

He’s the Berkley geographer who gave us the concept of the cultural landscape, the visible human

imprint activity on the landscape, which he

believed was the proper focus for all

geographers.

Think of him as the guy who put the nail in the coffin of the

environmental determinists.

Pre-Sauer Sauer

SW Asia Hearth Multiple hearths but 1st in SE Asia

Seed Agriculture (grains) came first

Vegetative Planting (root crops) came first.

Occurred in harsh climates that forced innovation due to population pressure and hunger

Occurred in areas of high biodiversity (many habitats and plant species). This allowed hunter gatherers to become sedentary which naturally lead to experimentation with root crops.

Rapid innovation Gradual innovation

10,000 years ago 14,000+ years ago

Theories of Plant Domestication

Location of Agricultural Hearths

Location of agricultural hearths Vegetative planting

(aka root cropping) is the reproduction of plants by direct cloning from existing plants, such as cutting stems and dividing roots [Cassava (manioc or yucca), yams, sweet potatoes]

• According to Sauer, the earliest vegetative agriculture appeared in Southeast Asia, and probably involved root vegetables like taro and yams, and perhaps tree crops like bananas.

• Vegetative agriculture then diffused throughout Asia and eventually to the Near East and Europe.

• Other, perhaps independent inventions took place in West Africa (oil palm, yam) and South America (manioc, arrowroot).

FIRST VEGETATIVE PLANTING: SE ASIA (?)

Sauer’s Three Hearth’s of Vegetative Planting:

SE Asia, West Africa, and Peruvian Highlands

Agricultural Origins and Regions

Location of agricultural hearths Seed agriculture

the reproduction of plants through annual planting of seeds that result from sexual fertilization

milletrice

flax

sorghum

wheat

barley

• Seed Planting also had multiple hearths: Northern China, Western India, Ethiopia

• Diffused rapidly from India into SW Asia (Fertile Crescent) and then into Europe.

• Later independent hearths in Mexico and Northern Peru

• SW Asia, once thought to be the sole hearth of all kinds of agriculture, still holds onto its title as the first place to combine seed agriculture with the domestication of herd animals (cattle, goats, pigs, sheep).

First Seed Planting: N. China, W. India, E. Africa (?)

Sauer’s Three Hearth’s of Seed Agriculture:

Northern China, Western India, Ethiopia

(also later Mexico and Northern Peru

Animal Domestication

The best animals to farm are large, plant eating mammals. Over the years, humans have probably tried to domesticate all of them, usually without success. For example, despite repeated efforts, Africans have never domesticated the elephant.

Jared Diamond counted 148 different species of wild, plant eating, terrestrial animals that weigh over 100 pounds. Of those, we have only successfully farmed for any length of time –just 14. They are: goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalos, llamas, reindeers, yaks, mithans and Bali cattle. All but one of these animals are native to Asia, North Africa and Europe. All were domesticated at least 4500 years ago.

The Big Four livestock animals: cows, pigs, sheep and goats were native to the SW Asia (Middle East/Fertile Crescent)

The Fertile Crescent

And now, an brief “archeology is cool moment”: Can 10,000 year old gazelle teeth tell us something about when hunter gatherers

first settled down and started domesticating animals?

As it turns out, yes! The outer layer of a gazelle’s teeth at the time of its death will

vary depending on what it was eating during the months before it died.

Archeologists studying the teeth of butchered gazelle in a Natufian cave site in modern Israel that had been occupied by homo sapiens from about 200,000 year ago, found that only after around 10,000 BCE or so were gazelle eaten in the cave year round, suggesting the date of earliest human sedentism (=staying in one place.)

Proof of early agriculture in Fertile Crescent: Natufian sickle (bone handle with microliths) c. 9000 BCE:

Takeaways: The First Agricultural Revolution (aka Neolithic Revolution)

• South and Southeast Asia: Root crops, up to 14,000 years ago

• Southwest Asia (the Fertile Crescent): Seed crops, about 10,000 years ago

• Why the “First” Agricultural Revolution…

• The Second Agricultural Revolution combined innovations in farm machinery (seed drill, McCormick Reaper), livestock breeding, and land consolidation (Enclosure Movement) to provide the surplus fencing needed to feed the large urban work force of the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

• Moved agriculture beyond subsistence to the generation of surpluses.

Second Agricultural Revolution

© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Also called the Green Revolution.

• Dates back to the 1930s: agricultural scientists in the American Midwest began experimenting with technologically manipulated seed varieties to increase crop yields.

• 1960s: the focal point of the Green Revolution shifted to India (IR8).

• The Green Revolution brought new high-yield varieties of wheat and corn from the United States to other parts of the world, particularly South and Southeast Asia.

The Third Agricultural Revolution