• Industrial Revolution -> Second Agricultural Revolution
  • Americas -> better crops to Europe
  • government policy
    • GrBr Enclosure Act -> small plots -> huge farm -> field rotation -> more efficient
  • tech
    • seed drill
    • livestock breeds for more milk or mewat
  • better agriculture -> bigger population -> secondary economy growth
  • innovation near 1900s -> sustained revolution
    • train -> Great Plains agriculture
    • engine -> tractor, other equipment

Spatial Layout of Agriculture

  • Thunen noticed distance from city -> different crops
  • Von Thunen model: concentric circles of agriculture
    • central city
    • market gardening and dairying
      • perishable goods
    • forest
      • fuel and building
    • field crops
      • non perishable
    • ranching, livestock
  • Liu noticed that in Chinese villages, land quality/treatment distance from village

Third Agricultural Revolution

  • Green Revolution
  • American Midwest
  • Science -> GMO
    • Corn from maize in Mexico
    • Rice in Asia
    • resistant to pests, disease, etc…
  • GMO helped with global hunger
  • impact depends on geography
    • didn’t help Africa as much
  • cons
    • pollen dispersal
    • super pests
    • pesticide and chemical fertlizer -> bad groundwater
    • subsistence farmers suffer

New GMOs

  • 75% of processed food in US
    • 38% corn
    • 80% of soybeans
  • resistance due to health/taste
  • “foreign idea invasion”

Regional and Local Change

  • Latin America
    • cash crops -> low local consumption crop production
    • subsistence farming -> marginal lands
  • Asia
    • Green Revolution -> cereal crops
    • small production, manual labor
  • Subsaharan Africa
    • exports decreased
    • small and manual labor
  • women are oppressed even though they do all the manual work
    • 85% in Africa
    • 75% in China
    • 70% in India