OBJECTIVES
1. To describe the origins of agriculture 2. To understand the concept of the “Three Agricultural Revolutions”
3. To describe key phases in the expansion and spread of agriculture
around the world
agriculture around the world
Fertile Crescent: The earliest archaelogical evidence of farming and agricultural villages
`
An early example of genetic modification
◦ Emmer
Emmer wheat still grows wild in mountains of wheat still grows wild in mountains of
Fertile Crescent
`
Wild ancestors of modern food crops
◦ Wheat
◦ Citrus?
◦ Teosinte and maize
Emmer wheat and modern wheat
modern wheat
Agriculture slowly spreads outwards from domestication hearths into adjacent regions. Process takes thousands of years
Key concept : Geographical diffusion (spatial diffusion)
1. Farming spreads slowly and gradually through human migrations and contacts between cultures. In the early stages, the process takes several thousand years
y
2. The rate of spread increases after 1492 because crops and animals are exchanged between Old World and New World
exchanged between Old World and New World
3. Rapid spread of farming into previously uncultivated regions (1850‐
1950)
especially north America Australia and eastern Soviet Union
1950), especially north America, Australia and eastern Soviet Union
The Columbus Exchange
Crosby, A.W. (1972)
The Columbian Exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492
Origins of food crops in the Caribbean Indigenous Taino food crops
Europe
Africa
India
Pacific
islands
Pacific islands
Irish potato and its impacts on European farming
Amerindian food crops have impacts on African farming
Maize
Cassava
Transition from subsistence farming to commercial farming
`
`
`
New and improved crops and farm animals
New farming methods
Start of mechanization
1. Farm mechanization (from 1920s)
2. Increased use of agrochemicals (from 1950s)
3. Increasing importance of agro‐processing (from 1950s) `
`
`
`
`
`
`
Go to Department of Geography & Geology webpage
Click on “Staff”
Click on lecturer’ss name (Prof David Barker)
Click on lecturer
name (Prof David Barker)
Click on “Courses”
Click on the appropriate lecture (Lecture 1, Lecture 2, etc)
pp p
(
,
, )
You will be prompted for your ID number and password
All will be revealed ‐ as a pdf
I. Bowler (1996) Introduction , photocopied chapter from Agricultural I. Bowler (1996) ‘Introduction’,
photocopied chapter from Agricultural
Change in Developed Countries, Cambridge University Press.
Knox, P.L. & S.A. Marston (2001) Places and Regions in Global Context: Human Geography 2nd Edn., New Jersey: Prentice Hall, pp321‐353
Human Geography, 2
Edn New Jersey: Prentice Hall pp321 353
McNeill, W.H. (1991) ‘American Food Crops in the Old World’ in Viola, g
( )
f
g , Smithsonian Institution: H.J. & C. Margolis (eds) Seeds of Change,
Washington DC, pp43‐59.
Grigg, D.B. (1985) ‘The expansion of the world’s arable land’, photocopied
chapter from The World Food Problem Blackwell
photocopied chapter from The World Food Problem, Blackwell.
Grigg , D.B. (1995) ‘The modernization of agriculture’, photocopied chapter from An introduction to Agricultural Geography, Routledge.