- agriculture: deliberate tending of crops and livestock to produce food, feed, and fiber
-
50% of crops in US are for livestock
There are different types of economic activities:
- primary economic activities: products close to ground
- agriculture
- secondary economic activities: processing/manufacturing
- tertiary economic activities: services
How these activities, such as agriculture, are produced (core or periphery methods) and its proportion in the total production of a country and its labor force (GDP, GNI, etc…) tells us about the development of a country.
- US agriculture prodcution is highlighy mechanized
- employment at its lowest, production at highest
- clearly core
Hunting, Gathering, Fishing
- pre-agriculture activities
- specialized based on region
- size of clans depended on climate and resources
Terrain and Tools
- tools were necessary for hunting and gathering
- controlled use of fire -> lighting, cooked food, etc…
- led to communities and migration
First Agricultural Revolution
- Carl Sauer: agriculture was created in lands of plenty
- plant domestication began ~ 14,000 years ago in SE Asia
- root crops were first
- seed crops in Fertile Crescent
- started FAR
- domestication -> plants bigger -> more food -> larger communities
- agricultural methods diffused
- millet from West Africa -> India, sorghum -> China
- corn -> Central America -> NA
- potato -> Europe from Andean highlands
Domestication of Animals
- goats, pigs, sheep domesticated around same time as plants
- goats in Fertile Crescent
- sheep in turkey
- started when people became more sedentary
- reasons:
- ceremony
- scavengers
- protection
- pets
- advantages:
- milk
- meat
- diffused quickly
- domestication -> docile animals -> animals get smaller over time
- similar species domesticated simultaneously in different places
- ongoing effort
- if possible it would’ve happened long ago
- diet, growth rate, breeding, disposition, social structure, size all matter
Hunter Gatherers in the Modern World
- pressure to change because of globalized economy
- territorial states -> no migration
- even no migration -> studied, mapped, recorded, commercialized, exploited
Subsistence Agriculture in Modern World
- subsistence farming: farming only what you eat
- poor
- way of life + state of mind
- commonly owned land, very egalitarian society
- shifting cultivation: migration for better farmland
- mainly in tropics in periphery
- low population density
- slash and burn agriculture: controleld use of fire to destroy vegetation -> ashes -> farming
- pretty sustained for thousands of years
Marginalization of Subsistence Farming
- colonialism -> Europeans force modernization of colonial farming
- planned out what to grow
- severe famines + disruption of local economies
- modernization -> destruction of subsistence farming +communities + increase wealth gap