1

AGRICULTURE:
What is agriculture?
Agriculture is the use of the land to produce food products for human and animal
consumption, and for industrial raw materials.

Physical factors/inputs and land use
Arable farming Dairying
Hill sheep
farming
Market
gardening
Definition
Growing of cereals,
vegetables and
animal feeds
Rearing of cattle
for milk
Sheep rearing for
meat and wool
Growing fruit,
vegetables and
flowers
Classification
Commercial,
intensive, arable
Commercial,
intensive,
pastoral
Commercial,
extensive,
pastoral
Commercial,
intensive,
arable
Location
East and south east
England, East
Anglia
West of Britain
and close to
large cities
Upland areas of
Britain, e.g.
Pennines, Lake
District
South and east
of England and
close to large
cities
Physical
factors
Flat relief; fertile
well-drained soils;
warm summers;
rainfall under
650mm (some in
growing season);
winter frosts to
break up soil and kill
pests
Gentle relief;
fertile soils; high
rainfall for grass
growth; mild
winters (over
6C)
High, steep relief;
thin infertile soils;
high rainfall (over
1000mm); low
temperatures
unsuitable for
crops
Long hours of
sunshine; most
other factors
are controlled
Human
factors
Large market in
south east; good
transport networks;
benefits from EU
subsidies and
intervention price
Access to large
markets; milk
subsidies up to
the 1980s when
quotas
introduced
Remote from
large markets;
limited labour;
EU subsidies and
grants
Access to
motorways and
airports; large
labour and
capital input

Terms:
1. pastoral-rearing of livestock for meat or other products such as milk or wool. This
includes milk and beef production together with sheep, goat and poultry farming. This can
be extensive in operation as in the commercial ranching of sheep in Australia or beef cattle
in East Texas, or it can be intensive system such as dairying in the dense market areas of
West Europe, e.g. Hill farmig in Mid Wales.

2. Arable-cultivation of plant crops such as grasses, cereals, vegetables, root crops and
animal foodstuff. This includes plantations, which produce crops such as coffee and rubber,
orchards which produces fruits and horticulture. E.g. East Anglia farming, UK.

CAP Policy What? Aims? Success or failure, solution
What is CAP POLICY? The scheme by which agricultural production within the
European Union is organized. It is established by Treaty of
Rome.
Aim -To increase agricultural productivity within member states
2
-to ensure a fair standard of living for their farmers
-to stabilize agricultural markets within and between member
states
-to ensure reasonable consumer prices
-to maintain jobs in agricultural areas

What is EU (European
Union)?
-The EU was established under the Treaty of Rome in 1957
with the objective to remove all trade barriers between
member countries.
-the desire was to form political and economic union to prevent
another war in Europe.
-Member countries; France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Italy, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Portugal
and Spain, Austria, Finland, Sweden and later another 10
countries joined.
Aims (Policy of CAP) Setting guaranteed minimum prices for most farm products. If
market price falls below this level, the surplus is bought and
put into storage.
To prevent foreign product from undercutting CAP prices,
import tariffs are placed on imported foodstuffs. Policy was too
successful.
-incentive of guaranteed high prices cause food production to
increase and cause surpluses, but storing the surplus and price
support for farmers has created financial burden, larger
proportion EU funding used to store and sell-off surpluses at
subsidized prices on world market.
Advantages:
EU self sufficient in food production, more marginal farmers
such as hill sheep farmers of N and W Britain still in business
and farming much more productive.
Problems:
Bureaucracy is highly inefficient, open to corruption, and cause
food prices to be higher than they should be on world scale.
Due to success of CAP that create problems of over production
and resulted food surpluses. Measure taken includes:
1. A decrease in support for cereals, beef and sheep
2.Introduction of quotas on production, particularly milk.
Maximum production totals shared out between member
countries and allocated to individual farmers.
3.An increase in set-aside policies. This policy to reduced cereal
production by, paying farmers to produce less, in which
payments are made for land that is taken out of production.
4.An increase in environmentally sensitive farming by
encouraging the decrease use of fertilizer and pesticides.
5. Early retirement plans for farmers aged 55 yrs old.

* Effects of CAP on arable and pastoral farming (Waugh, 455)

Intensive farming: High inputs of capital and/or labour per unit area. Such high inputs
would normally produce high outputs per unit area or high yields.

Why it is done? Pressure- land shortage, high population density or production of highly
perishable foods for urban market.
3

Can occur in subsistence farming-high input of labours per unit area of land, e.g. padi
field in S.E Asia.
Can also occur in commercial farming-high input of capital per unit area of land.
Market gardening, Horticulture, dairy farming.

Issues of intensive farming in LEDC:
1. Overcropping cause soil to deteriorate as too many crops grown on same land soil
loose nutrient and become infertile.

2. Salinisation, waterlogging and erosion caused by intensive farm production cause net
reduction in irrigated lands throughout Asia. E.g. China, between 1976 and 1996, area
under rice cultivation fell from 37 to 31 million hectares.

Extensive agriculture:
Where a relatively small amount of agricultural produce is obtained from a large area
but the input per unit land is low.

It can be apply to both pastoral and arable farming.
Pastoral farming-nomadic pastoralism, beef cattle ranching and hill sheep farming

Arable farming-shifting cultivation in Amazon Basin & wheat growing in large scale, e.g.
Canadian Prairies.

Issues or problem of extensive farming:
1. Overcropping causes soil to deteriorate e.g. growing single type of crop year after
year, constantly used up particular types of minerals from the soil, fertility decline.
2. Shifting cause land to be exposed and easily eroded due to rain.
3. Overgrazing too many animal graze on a piece of land grasses takes time to
recovered and may be killed, lack of vegetation to protect land from erosion.


Agricultural productivity is how efficiently output is produced from input/ how much is
produced. It is measured per unit area or hectare and per unit labour e.g. per worker or
man-hour

Soil erosion-how it can be minimized *

1) Assess the role of political factors encouraging agricultural change.

Political factors in many countries have a significant impact on agricultural change. The main
political factor would be in the form of subsidies, reforms and policies.

Many countries like the USA are granting large subsidies to their agricultural sector. The
USA and other developed nations have a plan to produce more and export more. By doing
this, the countries are establishing themselves in the international market. These countries can
recover the subsidy costs through export taxation, and increasing the foreign currency
reserves. This would ideally result in a win-win situation.

The agricultural policy in India used to be such that farmers were given small plots of land to
be cultivated which were, most of the time, owned by wealthy zamindars. Therefore farmers
had no real ownership of land and even if they did, the plot of land would be very small. It is
for this reason that the government introduced land reforms to abolish the zamindari system
and allow farmers to own land. This reform was not much of a success as the farmers were so
4
deeply indebted to the zamindars that there was no way to escape.

The government also introduced a land ceiling reform, which put a limit to the amount of land
a person could own. This meant that wealthy landowners had to give up portions of their land.
The governments plan was to distribute the excess land among marginal farmers. But due to
the laws of inheritance, the already small piece of land became smaller and smaller as it was
divided among children. This reform was also not much of a success as it resulted in low
productivity.

Another major political factor that changed agriculture in India was the technological reform
brought in by the government in the 1960s, also known as the Green Revolution. The green
revolution introduced artificial fertilizers and pesticides and high yielding varieties of seeds
(HYVs). These...

-(Refer handout)-Green Revolution-environmental impact of the Green Revolution
-Issues of intensification of agriculture and the extension of cultivation
-The managing of agricultural change-Jamaica.