Agricultural geography is a sub-discipline of

human geography Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography that studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment. It analyzes spatial interdependencies between social ...

concerned with the spatial relationships found between agriculture and humans. That is, the study of the phenomenons and effects that lead to the formation of the earth's top surface, in different regions.

History

Humans have been interacting with their surroundings since as early as man has been around. According to article "How Does an Agricultural Region Originate?" English settlers who landed on American soil hundred of years ago greatly shaped American agriculture when they learned how to plant and grow crops from the Natives. Settlers continue to change the landscape by the demolishing wooded areas and turning them into pasteurized fields.

Focus

It is traditionally considered the branch of

economic geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity and factors affecting them. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. There are four branches of economic geography. There is, primary sect ...

that investigates those parts of the

Earth's surface Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...

that are transformed by humans through

primary sector The primary sector of the economy includes any industry involved in the extraction and production of raw materials, such as farming, logging, fishing, forestry and mining. The primary sector tends to make up a larger portion of the economy ...

activities for consumption. It thus focuses on the different types of structures of agricultural landscapes and asks for the cultural, social, economic, political, and environmental processes that lead to these spatial patterns. While most research in this area concentrates rather on production than on consumption, a distinction can be made between

nomothetic Nomothetic literally means "proposition of the law" (Greek derivation) and is used in philosophy, psychology, and law with differing meanings. Etymology In general humanities usage, ''nomothetic'' may be used in the sense of "able to lay down ...

(e.g. distribution of spatial agricultural patterns and processes) and idiographic research (e.g. human-environment interaction and the shaping of agricultural landscapes). The latter approach of agricultural geography is often applied within

regional geography Regional geography is a major branch of geography. It focuses on the interaction of different cultural and natural geofactors in a specific land or landscape, while its counterpart, systematic geography, concentrates on a specific geofactor at the ...

Events

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovia from 1992-1995 affected a large majority of the country farming land due to the large number of land mines (approximately 1 million) that were planted and never were recovered or detonated. These areas with the landmines have become abandoned for obvious safety reasons. Much of the area where the landmines were planted was farming land, now residents of this country have to find another way to grow the crops they once planted there.

Research Studies

A research study was done in Uganda where the researchers selected four completely different types of environmental factors and those factors were: rain-forest with no animal interaction, rain-forest animal and human interaction, urban living, and rain-forest with animal interaction. After running several analyzing test using the top soil and rain water it was determined that the urban living areas had higher levels of nitrogen, calcium and pH levels.

References

Literature

*Robinson, G.M. (2003): ''Geographies of Agriculture: Globalisation, Restructuring and Sustainability''.

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

. *Grigg, D. (1995): ''An Introduction to Agricultural Geography''. Routledge.

External links

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

Economic geography {{geography-stub