This is the full-content study version of "Patterns of Economic Activity — Agriculture" — the spatial patterns of agricultural production part of the People, Patterns and Processes focus area. Read it, then use the activity sheet and the topic study guide to revise. Agriculture is where physical geography (climate, soil, water) and human geography (technology, markets, culture) meet on the map.
Syllabus: spatial patterns of agricultural production.
Agriculture is the cultivation of crops and the raising of animals for food, fibre and other materials. Geographers sort the world's farming into a handful of systems, distinguished by their purpose (feed the family vs sell for profit), their intensity (inputs of labour and capital per hectare), and the environment they suit. The two big families are subsistence and commercial.
Small-scale farming and livestock-rearing carried out mainly to feed the farmer's own family or household, with little or no surplus for sale. Still widespread in the developing world.
Farming carried out mainly to sell produce for profit, using capital, machinery and modern methods, and integrated into national and global markets.
| System | Family | Key features | Typical where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subsistence | Subsistence | Small plots, family food, simple tools, mixed cropping | Parts of Africa, South & SE Asia |
| Shifting cultivation | Subsistence | Clear & burn a patch, crop a few years, move on to let it regenerate | Tropical rainforest (Amazon, Congo, SE Asia) |
| Pastoral nomadism | Subsistence | Herders move livestock seasonally to find pasture & water | Arid & semi-arid lands (Sahel, Central Asia) |
| Extensive commercial | Commercial | Very large areas, low inputs per hectare, machinery, grain & grazing | Canadian prairies, Australian outback, Pampas |
| Intensive commercial | Commercial | High inputs per hectare, high yields — horticulture, dairy, feedlots, glasshouses | Near cities & in wet, fertile regions |
| Mediterranean | Commercial | Hot dry summers / mild wet winters — olives, grapes, citrus | Mediterranean Basin, California, S & SW Australia |
| Plantation | Commercial | Large estate, one export cash crop (monoculture) | Tropics — coffee, tea, rubber, sugar |
Two axes untangle every system: purpose (subsistence → commercial) and intensity (extensive = spread thin over lots of land → intensive = concentrated inputs on a small area). A wheat farm and a market garden are both commercial, but opposite ends of the intensity axis.
Where each system sits on the map — and why.
The pattern is not random. Climate sets the outer limits (temperature, rainfall, growing season); soils, water and terrain refine it; and human factors — technology, capital, distance to market, land tenure and history — decide which system actually operates. Subsistence systems cluster in the developing world and in marginal environments; extensive commercial farming occupies the vast, sparsely-settled interiors of the mid-latitudes; intensive and Mediterranean systems sit where climate and markets reward high-value output; plantations ring the tropics.
Grain and grazing on a continental scale.
The Canadian Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) are one of the world's great grain regions — wheat and canola grown on very large, highly-mechanised farms with low labour per hectare. Canada is consistently among the top few wheat and canola exporters.
Australia mirrors this: a broad wheat-sheep belt arcs through WA, SA, Vic, NSW and southern Qld, while the arid outback carries extensive cattle and sheep grazing on enormous stations — Anna Creek Station in SA is often cited as the world's largest working cattle station (roughly 23,000 km²). Both countries trade heavily on export markets.
Farming tuned to hot dry summers and mild wet winters.
Tuscany in central Italy is a classic Mediterranean landscape: olives, grapevines and cereals grown across hills with hot dry summers and mild wet winters. The climate suits deep-rooted, drought-tolerant tree and vine crops, and the produce (Chianti wine, olive oil) carries strong cultural identity and premium value.
The same climate and crop mix reappear in Napa Valley, California — high-value wine grapes in a Mediterranean pocket — and in south-western and southern Australia, showing how one climate type reproduces a farming system in five separate world regions.
One crop, for export, from the tropics.
Plantations are large commercial estates that specialise in a single export cash crop (monoculture), typically in tropical or subtropical countries and often a legacy of the colonial era. Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer; tea is grown on estates in India (Assam, Darjeeling) and Sri Lanka; and natural rubber comes mainly from South-East Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam).
Plantations bring export income and employment but raise questions of sustainability (monoculture, deforestation), vulnerability to a single world price, and labour and ethics.
A good case study answer names the where, the crop/system, one verified fact (e.g. Brazil = largest coffee producer), and links it to a concept (here: interconnection through world trade; sustainability of monoculture).
From the first domestication to the Green Revolution and beyond.
Agriculture is not fixed — it has changed the world in stages, each raising output and reshaping societies.
A region of the Middle East that was one of the origins of plant and animal domestication (wheat, barley, sheep, goats) during the Neolithic. Farming arose independently in several other world centres too (e.g. Mesoamerica, China, the Andes).
The mid-20th-century adoption of high-yield crop varieties, irrigation, and synthetic fertilisers and pesticides that greatly raised crop yields — dramatically increasing food output (especially in Asia and Latin America), while also raising ecological concerns.
Each stage let more food be grown by fewer people, supporting population growth, urbanisation and specialisation — but also intensifying the pressure agriculture places on land, water and climate (see 7.4.7).
The costs of feeding the world — and the sustainability question.
Modern agriculture feeds billions, but it is a major driver of environmental change. Intensive and extensive systems alike can cause soil degradation and erosion, salinity, water depletion, biodiversity loss (monoculture, land clearing) and pollution from fertiliser and pesticide run-off.
Greenhouse-gas emissions: agriculture, forestry and other land use is a major source of global greenhouse-gas emissions — roughly a fifth to a quarter of the total (IPCC / FAO) — from livestock, rice, fertilisers and land clearing.
Food loss and waste: about a third of the food produced worldwide is lost or wasted (FAO), even as hunger persists — a paradox of abundance and scarcity that shapes agricultural policy.
Quote these as ranges attributed to their source ("about a third of food is lost or wasted — FAO"; "roughly a fifth to a quarter of emissions — IPCC/FAO"). Don't invent decimal places the sources don't support.
Climate change runs both ways: farming contributes to it, and it also threatens farming — shifting rainfall, longer droughts and more extreme events force changes in what can be grown where. Responses include precision agriculture, drought-tolerant varieties, improved irrigation efficiency and reducing food waste.
You should be able to: name and distinguish the main agricultural systems (subsistence, shifting cultivation, pastoral nomadism, extensive/intensive commercial, Mediterranean, plantation); describe their spatial distribution and explain it with climate + human factors; use verified case studies (Canadian Prairies / Australian outback; Tuscany; plantation crops); outline the evolution of agriculture from Neolithic domestication to the Green Revolution; and evaluate agriculture's environmental and climate impacts. Test yourself with the activity sheet and the topic study guide.
Everything in this chapter traces to a source you can check. Watch the explainer, read the primary sources, follow the news, and practise the geographical skills this chapter uses.