Agricultural Production Regions
Agricultural production regions are geographic areas where specific crops or livestock are cultivated or raised. These regions are characterized by their suitability for certain types of agriculture due to factors such as climate, soil, and topography. They play a crucial role in global food production and trade, shaping the agricultural landscape and influencing economic and social dynamics.
4 Key excerpts on "Agricultural Production Regions"
eBook - ePubThe Articulated Peasant
Household Economies In The Andes
- Enrique Mayer(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Examples of these fields would be slope terraces, irrigated terraces, meadows, and orchards. These distinct field types have the advantage of forming easily recognizable patterns for mapping from aerial photos, a technique that has been used to map all the production zones in the Cañete Valley (Mayer and Fonseca 1979; see Map 8.1). Clifford Smith, William Denevan, and Patrick Fiamilton (1981: 25–50) have identified abandoned raised fields in the Titicaca Basin in the same way, and Pierre Morion (1996) provides a complete compendium of Andean agricultural systems that pays close attention to field types in relation to slope, frost mitigation, flood control, crops, and production intensity. Since any one type of field occupies a specific territory, production zones form bounded ecosystems that permit rigorous ecological study. We must recognize, however, that these microenvironments are modified by human action. For each production zone there is a specific form of social organization among people who have access to it that permits the production of crops. A formal definition of production zones is as follows: a communally managed set of specific productive resources in which crops are grown in distinctive ways. These zones include infra-structural features, a particular system of rationing resources (such as irrigation water and natural grasses), and rule-making mechanisms that regulate how the productive resources are to be used. Complementing the management of these resources are individual production units (such as households) that hold access rights to specific portions of these resources. They have full rights to all products obtained by them from their labor, and they have the right to transmit them to others. Despite the great natural diversity in the Cañete Valley, production zones are fairly uniform...
eBook - ePubRegional Economic Problems
Comparative Experiences of Some Market Economies
- A. J. Brown, E. M. Burrows(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 4 Agricultural Problem Regions WORLD AGRICULTURAL TRENDS Agriculture still occupies something like half of the economically active population of the world, though the proportion varies nationally – and still more regionally – from less than 2 per cent at one extreme to 80 or more per cent at the other. At the same time, despite growing population and, in most countries, growing per capita income, demand for agricultural produce in general is increasing very much less fast than demand for non-agricultural goods and services. This can be attributed to two kinds of influence. On one hand, the growth of technical knowledge leads to the substitution of non-agricultural for agricultural materials – most obviously synthetic fibres for cotton, silk and wool, synthetic for natural rubber and, synthetic plastics for leather. On the other hand, as per capita incomes rise, the proportion of them spent on foodstuffs tends to fall. This happens to different extents at different income levels; in relatively poor countries the income elasticity of demand for foodstuffs (the ratio of percentage rise in per capita food consumption to percentage rise in per capita income) can be quite high, but in all the advanced industrial countries it is low, and the figure for the world as a whole is well below unity. The balance of production is thus shifting away from agricultural products. The implications of this for farm activity vary widely. ln many countries where agriculture is largely on a subsistence basis, or is traditional in its methods, the productivity of labour in it has risen little, whereas productivity in the industrialised sector of the economy has risen relatively fast. In these circumstances, agriculture has kept its share of the total active population, and its problem has tended to be one of decreasing relative incomes, a tendency sometimes exacerbated by land shortage in the face of rising population...
eBook - ePubClimate Change and Crop Production
Foundations for Agroecosystem Resilience
- Noureddine Benkeblia, Noureddine Benkeblia(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...Such approaches have the potential to increase the agricultural productivity in smallholder farming systems and improve the farmers’ buffer capacity against climate risks like droughts and water scarcity (Giller et al. 2011; Speranza 2013). 8.8 Summary This chapter presented a case study of the dynamics of agricultural production in smallholder farming communities in southern Africa, and examined the pattern of crop production and land use change in relation to topographic zones. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to delineate the study area cross section and to determine altitudinal and slope changes. Land use change in three altitudinal zones of the study area over the years 2005 to 2015 was detected from satellite imageries and analyzed to establish the dynamics in relation to topography. Household questionnaire surveys were conducted to gather information about the farmers’ experiences across the heterogeneous landscape. The analysis showed that topography is an important factor in the dynamics of crop production and land use change. The chapter discussed a number of climate change and variability related challenges experienced by the local farmers. It also highlighted several opportunities for enhancing the resilience of smallholder farmers to the impacts of climate change and variability. The opportunities include the adoption of agriculture-biodiversity integration strategies, growing of early-maturing and drought tolerant crop varieties, involvement of family members in decision-making, climate information dissemination and sharing, as well as utilization of local indigenous knowledge systems. Apparently, there are several adaptation strategies available for adoption by the smallholder farmers...
eBook - ePubThe Human Impact of Climate Uncertainty
Weather Information, Economic Planning, and Business Management
- W. J. Maunder(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...An OverviewRelationships between agricultural production and climate are usually assessed through the development of agroclimatological models. Some of these models attempt to mirror the physical processes that actually cause variations in agricultural production (such as soil water availability), but in many cases a statistical relationship is established such as linking rainfall and temperature variations with variations in wheat or rice production. These statistical models do not ‘explain’ environmental processes, but they do condense complex cause-and-effect linkages into useful associations.In general, climate and agricultural production models assess the significance of a weather/climate variation on either the productivity of ‘human-altered agricultural environments’ such as the Iowa corn field or the Korean rice paddy, or the productivity of the more ‘natural’ environments of the Australian merino sheep or the Wyoming range cattle. The economic, political, and strategic importance of being able to predict the significance of larger-scale weather and climate fluctuations on agricultural production also needs to be considered, particularly as this information contributes to national and global security.2. Dairy Production Forecasts: A New Zealand Example1New Zealand, the world’s largest exporter of dairy products, markets and sells its products in more than 100 countries. In this regard, the quality, and price of the products are very important, but of equal importance is the guarantee of a regular supply of specialized dairy products to an increasingly food-conscious world. This regular supply is largely dependent on the quantity and quality of production from the dairy farm; forecasts of production are therefore of paramount importance to decision-makers at all levels in the New Zealand dairy industry.Milkfat processed by dairy factories in New Zealand varies from year to year (e.g...
