GEOG 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Urban Sprawl, Arable Land, Sea Level Rise
People are moving away from the land that food is grown on
Food security:
People, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life
-
Agricultural land:
Losing agricultural land because of climate change (high
temperature, drought, rising water levels)
-
2010: 37.7% of world's total land was considered agricultural land,
10.6% considered arable
-
17.6 million sq km used to grow crops
-
Farmable:
Arable land: temporarily used for crops, meadows, or pastures,
including land purposefully left temporarily fallow, doesn’t
include potentially cultivable land
○
Agricultural land: arable land and land used for permanent,
long term crops that don't need to be replanted yearly,
permanent meadow and pasture land. Includes fruit and nut
trees, but excludes trees grown for timber
○
-
Factors affecting farmable land
Climate
○
Water
○
Soil composition and rockiness
○
Altitude
○
Urban development and sprawl, pollution and landfills
○
Deforestation
○
Soil salinization
○
Climate change (desertification and sea level rise)
○
-
Urban sprawl:
Growing cities sprawl over what once was mostly farmland, only 5%
of Canada's entire land base is suitable for growing food
-
Global connections:
Food production/cost effected by natural disasters
-
Food price index, monthly price changes for a food basket composed
of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat, and sugar
-
Facts:
About half the world's labor force is employed in agriculture
-
We rely on only about 20 crops for almost all of our food
-
About 870 million people are chronically malnourished
-
Total amount of land that is under cultivation is about 1.5 billion ha
-
95% of the world's farms are small-scale (less than 5 ha)
-
2 billion people depend on small farms for the livelihoods
-
1 billion people in rural areas live on less than $1.25/day
-
Small scale farmers produce 70% of the world's food on 25% of the
world's farmland
-
Small farms more productive than big farms
-
Most small farmers are women
-
Small farms squeezed onto less than a quarter of world's farmland
-
Types of agriculture:
Definition of agriculture: science, art, and business directed at
cultivation of crops and raising of livestock for sustenance and profit
-
Subsistence farming:
Grow enough food to eat, as well as some surplus for market
○
Fewer chemical inputs
○
Labor intensive
○
Polyculture (numerous crops are interplanted)
○
Smaller farms
○
Practiced mainly in poorer countries
○
-
Shifting cultivation:
Humid tropical forest regions
○
Rotational agriculture
○
Polyculture, mixed crops and trees
○
Fruit trees often planted in fallows
○
Supports relatively low population densities
○
-
Intensive subsistence cultivation:
Labor intensive
○
Raised fields or terraces common
○
Support large population
○
Two or more harvest a year possible
○
Rice (China, India etc...)
Flatlands needed because plant must be submerged for
much of time (river valleys/deltas and terraces(
§
Warm winters, 2 crops per year
§
Drier, colder parts, other crops grown in rotation
§
○
-
Pastoralism:
Cold and dry climates
○
Transhumance herding (horses, camels, goats, sheep, cattle,
reindeer depending on climate, vegetation tradition)
○
Traditional movement of nomadic pastoralists increasing
restricted (about 15 million)
○
-
Commercial agriculture:
Production for the market
○
Dominate type in core countries
○
Large agribusiness and small family farms
○
Number of small farms decreasing, but size of farms are
increasing
○
-
Industrial agriculture:
Farms that includes production, storage, processing,
distribution, marketing, and retailing
○
Regional or global in scope, depending on type of agriculture
○
Heavy reliance on agrochemicals
Synthetic fertilizers/pesticides
§
○
Monocultures, high yielding varieties
○
Highly mechanized
○
Larger farms/plantations
○
-
Permaculture?
-
Environmental factors that condition agriculture:
Climate and weather
Can be over come with greenhouses, irrigation
○
Most plants' optimal temp are between 18-25 degrees
○
Low temp: slow growth, short season (plant's don't reach
maturity, limits geographic range of crops)
○
Variability and predictability
○
-
Soil characteristics
Best soils have loamy texture, high organic matter content,
abundant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium,
micronutrients)
○
-
Topography
Altitude temperature
○
Steep slopes, problems with erosion
○
Difficult to mechanize on steep slopes
○
-
Human factors that condition agriculture
Cultural traditions and preferences
-
Technologies
-
Distance from markets
-
Government policies
-
Economic globalization
-
Urban development and sprawl, pollution and landfills
-
Deforestation and soil salinization
-
Anthropogenic climate change (desertification and sea level rise)
-
Increases in production:
Hybrid crop varieties
Mature faster
○
Produce more food per plant
○
Some bred to respond better to fertilizers
○
Can reduce vulnerability to pests, but they continue to evolve
and monocultures allow rapid spread of pests
○
-
Irrigation
Increases yield, opens up new areas to allow more harvests
per year
○
Problems with irrigation:
Productive land not used effectively
§
Irrigation and fertilizer application efficiency could be
improved
§
Food still lost to pests and spoilage
§
○
-
Biotech (GMOs)
Resistance to insects without pesticides, resistance to
herbicides
○
Higher nutritional value, longer shelf life, altered flavor/color
○
Saves money, reduce use of fossil fuels
○
Problems:
No clear definition of what genetically modified is
§
Long germ effects on environment, animal, or people?
§
○
Major crops: maize, soybeans, cotton, canola
○
-
Environmental impacts:
Chemical inputs
-
Agricultural alternatives:
Local food
Improve local economies
○
More self-reliant and resilient food networks
○
Positive impact on local health, environment, community, and
society
○
-
Organic farming
No synthetic pesticides or fertilizers
○
No growth hormones or antibiotics in livestock
○
No GMOs
○
Consumers must be willing to pay more
○
-
Food and Agriculture
Monday, November 13, 2017
8:37 AM
People are moving away from the land that food is grown on
Food security:
People, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life
-
Agricultural land:
Losing agricultural land because of climate change (high
temperature, drought, rising water levels)
-
2010: 37.7% of world's total land was considered agricultural land,
10.6% considered arable
-
17.6 million sq km used to grow crops
-
Farmable:
Arable land: temporarily used for crops, meadows, or pastures,
including land purposefully left temporarily fallow, doesn’t
include potentially cultivable land
○
Agricultural land: arable land and land used for permanent,
long term crops that don't need to be replanted yearly,
permanent meadow and pasture land. Includes fruit and nut
trees, but excludes trees grown for timber
○
-
Factors affecting farmable land
Climate
○
Water
○
Soil composition and rockiness
○
Altitude
○
Urban development and sprawl, pollution and landfills
○
Deforestation
○
Soil salinization
○
Climate change (desertification and sea level rise)
○
-
Urban sprawl:
Growing cities sprawl over what once was mostly farmland, only 5%
of Canada's entire land base is suitable for growing food
-
Global connections:
Food production/cost effected by natural disasters
-
Food price index, monthly price changes for a food basket composed
of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat, and sugar
-
Facts:
About half the world's labor force is employed in agriculture
-
We rely on only about 20 crops for almost all of our food
-
About 870 million people are chronically malnourished
-
Total amount of land that is under cultivation is about 1.5 billion ha
-
95% of the world's farms are small-scale (less than 5 ha)
-
2 billion people depend on small farms for the livelihoods
-
1 billion people in rural areas live on less than $1.25/day
-
Small scale farmers produce 70% of the world's food on 25% of the
world's farmland
-
Small farms more productive than big farms
-
Most small farmers are women
-
Small farms squeezed onto less than a quarter of world's farmland
-
Types of agriculture:
Definition of agriculture: science, art, and business directed at
cultivation of crops and raising of livestock for sustenance and profit
-
Subsistence farming:
Grow enough food to eat, as well as some surplus for market
○
Fewer chemical inputs
○
Labor intensive
○
Polyculture (numerous crops are interplanted)
○
Smaller farms
○
Practiced mainly in poorer countries
○
-
Shifting cultivation:
Humid tropical forest regions
○
Rotational agriculture
○
Polyculture, mixed crops and trees
○
Fruit trees often planted in fallows
○
Supports relatively low population densities
○
-
Intensive subsistence cultivation:
Labor intensive
○
Raised fields or terraces common
○
Support large population
○
Two or more harvest a year possible
○
Rice (China, India etc...)
Flatlands needed because plant must be submerged for
much of time (river valleys/deltas and terraces(
§
Warm winters, 2 crops per year
§
Drier, colder parts, other crops grown in rotation
§
○
-
Pastoralism:
Cold and dry climates
○
Transhumance herding (horses, camels, goats, sheep, cattle,
reindeer depending on climate, vegetation tradition)
○
Traditional movement of nomadic pastoralists increasing
restricted (about 15 million)
○
-
Commercial agriculture:
Production for the market
○
Dominate type in core countries
○
Large agribusiness and small family farms
○
Number of small farms decreasing, but size of farms are
increasing
○
-
Industrial agriculture:
Farms that includes production, storage, processing,
distribution, marketing, and retailing
○
Regional or global in scope, depending on type of agriculture
○
Heavy reliance on agrochemicals
Synthetic fertilizers/pesticides
§
○
Monocultures, high yielding varieties
○
Highly mechanized
○
Larger farms/plantations
○
-
Permaculture?
-
Environmental factors that condition agriculture:
Climate and weather
Can be over come with greenhouses, irrigation
○
Most plants' optimal temp are between 18-25 degrees
○
Low temp: slow growth, short season (plant's don't reach
maturity, limits geographic range of crops)
○
Variability and predictability
○
-
Soil characteristics
Best soils have loamy texture, high organic matter content,
abundant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium,
micronutrients)
○
-
Topography
Altitude temperature
○
Steep slopes, problems with erosion
○
Difficult to mechanize on steep slopes
○
-
Human factors that condition agriculture
Cultural traditions and preferences
-
Technologies
-
Distance from markets
-
Government policies
-
Economic globalization
-
Urban development and sprawl, pollution and landfills
-
Deforestation and soil salinization
-
Anthropogenic climate change (desertification and sea level rise)
-
Increases in production:
Hybrid crop varieties
Mature faster
○
Produce more food per plant
○
Some bred to respond better to fertilizers
○
Can reduce vulnerability to pests, but they continue to evolve
and monocultures allow rapid spread of pests
○
-
Irrigation
Increases yield, opens up new areas to allow more harvests
per year
○
Problems with irrigation:
Productive land not used effectively
§
Irrigation and fertilizer application efficiency could be
improved
§
Food still lost to pests and spoilage
§
○
-
Biotech (GMOs)
Resistance to insects without pesticides, resistance to
herbicides
○
Higher nutritional value, longer shelf life, altered flavor/color
○
Saves money, reduce use of fossil fuels
○
Problems:
No clear definition of what genetically modified is
§
Long germ effects on environment, animal, or people?
§
○
Major crops: maize, soybeans, cotton, canola
○
-
Environmental impacts:
Chemical inputs
-
Agricultural alternatives:
Local food
Improve local economies
○
More self-reliant and resilient food networks
○
Positive impact on local health, environment, community, and
society
○
-
Organic farming
No synthetic pesticides or fertilizers
○
No growth hormones or antibiotics in livestock
○
No GMOs
○
Consumers must be willing to pay more
○
-
Food and Agriculture
Monday, November 13, 2017 8:37 AM
Document Summary
People are moving away from the land that food is grown on. People, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Losing agricultural land because of climate change (high temperature, drought, rising water levels) 2010: 37. 7% of world"s total land was considered agricultural land, 17. 6 million sq km used to grow crops. Arable land: temporarily used for crops, meadows, or pastures, including land purposefully left temporarily fallow, doesn"t include potentially cultivable land. Agricultural land: arable land and land used for permanent, long term crops that don"t need to be replanted yearly, permanent meadow and pasture land. Includes fruit and nut trees, but excludes trees grown for timber. Growing cities sprawl over what once was mostly farmland, only 5% of canada"s entire land base is suitable for growing food.