Agricultural geography is a sub-discipline of

human geography Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography which studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment, examples of which include urban sprawl and urban ...

concerned with the spatial relationships found between agriculture and humans. That is, the study of the phenomena 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 that studies economic activity and factors affecting it. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topi ...

that investigates those parts of the

Earth's surface Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

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 in d ...

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 the general humanities usage, ''nomothetic'' may be used in the sense of "able to lay do ...

(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 one of the major traditions 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 geo ...

Events

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 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 Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

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 Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

calcium Calcium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar to it ...

and pH levels.

References

Literature

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

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

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

External links

Geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

Economic geography {{geography-stub