Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes

Agriculture 农业 is the deliberate growing of crops and raising of animals for food and other products. A first big split:

• Subsistence agriculture 自给农业 — farming to feed the farmer's own family, common in less-developed regions.
• Commercial agriculture 商业农业 — farming to sell for profit, common in developed regions and often large-scale and mechanised.

Farming also varies by intensity: intensive 集约 farming uses a lot of labour or money on a small area (rice paddies, market gardening); extensive 粗放 farming uses little input over a large area (ranching, shifting cultivation).

The two photos below are the two ends of the first split — one machine feeding a market versus one person feeding a family:

Commercial agriculture: one combine harvester cuts a huge wheat field with almost no labour, growing grain to sell

Subsistence agriculture: a farmer works a small plot by hand with a hoe, mainly to feed the family

How farmers settle the land leaves a lasting pattern.

• Clustered (nucleated) 集聚式 settlements group homes together; dispersed 分散 settlements spread them out; linear settlements follow a road or river.
• Survey methods divide the land: the metes-and-bounds system uses natural features; the township-and-range system uses a grid of squares; the long-lot system gives each farm a thin strip reaching a river or road.

Farming began in a few hearths and spread by diffusion, then was transformed by three revolutions.

• The First (Neolithic) Agricultural Revolution 新石器农业革命 was the original domestication of plants and animals, letting people settle in one place.
• The Second Agricultural Revolution 第二次农业革命 used the tools of the Industrial Revolution (machines, better transport, crop rotation) to raise output and feed growing cities.
• The Green Revolution 绿色革命 (mid-1900s) introduced high-yield seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and irrigation — hugely increasing food output, though at an environmental and social cost.

Worked example (a real AP exam question). "Describe the concept of an early hearth of domestication." (2023) A full-mark answer: "A place where people first domesticated a wild plant or animal into a farmed variety, and from which that farming practice then spread to other regions." The command word Describe wants more than a one-word definition — give the key features (where domestication began and that it spread) — but it does not require the cause-and-effect reasoning that "Explain" demands.

The type of farming in a place depends on climate and level of development.

• Tropical regions favour shifting cultivation 迁移农业 (slash-and-burn) and plantation crops; dry regions favour pastoral nomadism 游牧 (herding).
• Developed regions have mixed crop and livestock, dairying, and large commercial grain farms.
• Bid-rent theory 竞租理论 explains why land close to a market is used more intensively: it is more expensive, so it must earn more per hectare.

A tea plantation 种植园: a single cash crop grown in neat rows over a large area, typical of tropical commercial farming

Two axes — how much labour and capital go in per unit of land (intensive vs extensive), and who the food is for (subsistence vs commercial)

The von Thünen model 冯·杜能模型 (1826) explains what farmers grow where, based on transport cost and distance to market.

Perishable, heavy, or intensive products locate near the market; extensive uses locate farther out

• At the centre is the market (a city). Around it, land use forms concentric rings.
• Ring 1 — market gardening and dairying (perishable, must be near market).
• Ring 2 — forest (heavy firewood, costly to move, in his day).
• Ring 3 — field crops and grain (less perishable).
• Ring 4 — ranching (extensive, low value per hectare, can be far away).

The model assumes a flat, uniform plain with one market. Real regions bend the rings because of roads, rivers, terrain, and refrigeration — but the core idea, that transport cost shapes land use, still holds.

Modern farming is a global supply chain 全球供应链.

• Agribusiness 农业综合企业 links farms to seed, machinery, processing, and retail companies.
• Many countries specialise in a few export commodities 出口商品 (coffee, cocoa, soy), which can make them dependent on world prices.
• Fair trade 公平贸易 and local-food movements are responses to the inequalities of this global system.

Modern agriculture feeds billions but creates problems:

• Environmental: soil erosion, water pollution from fertiliser, loss of biodiversity, desertification 荒漠化, and greenhouse-gas emissions.
• Economic and social: the loss of small family farms, rural depopulation, and questions about food security 粮食安全 and GMOs 转基因生物.
• Land use change: suburbanisation and urban growth eat into farmland at the edge of cities.

In much of the developing world, women do the majority of farm labour, especially in subsistence agriculture, yet often own little of the land. Their role is central to family food supply. Improving women's access to land, credit, and education raises farm output and, by lowering fertility, links back to the demographic transition.

• Classify farming on two axes at once: subsistence or commercial, and intensive or extensive.
• Drive every Von Thünen answer with transport cost and the perishability of the product.
• Weigh the Green Revolution: higher yields against costly inputs, environmental harm, and uneven reach.
• Name the survey system (long-lot, township-and-range, metes-and-bounds) from the field shape.
• Connect farming to its consequences: soil degradation, water pollution, and deforestation.