Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
areas, severe famines resulted and local economies were
disrupted.
Subsistence land use continues to give way to more
intensive farming and cash cropping—even to mecha-
nized farming in which equipment does much of the
actual work. In the process, societies from South America
to Southeast Asia are being profoundly affected. Land
that was once held communally is being parceled out to
individuals for cash cropping. In the process, small land-
owners are often squeezed out, leaving the land in the
hands of wealthier farmers and the owners of commercial-
ized farming operations.
For too long, the question has been how “to tempt
[subsistence farmers] into wanting cash by the availability
of suitable consumer goods,” as A. N. Duckham and G. B.
Masefi eld wrote in
Farming Systems of the World
in 1970.
In the interests of “progress” and “modernization,” sub-
sistence farmers were pushed away from their traditional
modes of livelihood even though many aspects of subsis-
tence farming may be worth preserving. Regions with
shifting cultivation do not have neat rows of plants, care-
fully turned soil, or precisely laid-out fi elds. Yet shifting
cultivation conserves both forest and soil; its harvests are
often substantial given environmental limitations; and it
requires better organization than one might assume. It
also requires substantially less energy than more modern
techniques of farming. It is no surprise, then, that shifting
cultivation and specifi cally slash-and-burn agriculture
have been a sustained method of farming for thousands
of years.
systems circle around a pivot, providing irrigation to a
circle of crops. The checkerboard pattern on the land-
scape refl ects the pattern of land survey system and land
ownership in much of the country.
The pattern of land ownership seen in the landscape
refl ects the cadastral system—the method of land survey
through which land ownership and property lines are
defi ned. Cadastral systems were adopted in places where
settlement could be regulated by law, and land surveys
were crucial to their implementation. The prevailing sur-
vey system throughout much of the United States, the one
that appears as checkerboards across agricultural fi elds, is
the
rectangular survey system
. The U.S. government
adopted the rectangular survey system after the American
Revolution as part of a cadastral system known as the
township-and-range system
. Designed to facilitate the
movement of non-Indians evenly across farmlands of
the United States interior, the system imposed a rigid grid
like pattern on the land (Fig. 11.10). The basic unit was
the 1 square mile
section
—and land was bought and sold in
whole, half, or quarter sections. The section's lines were
drawn without reference to the terrain, and they thus
imposed a remarkable uniformity across the land. Under
the Homestead Act, a homesteader received one section
of land (160 acres) after living on the land for fi ve years
and making improvements to it. The pattern of farms on
the landscape in the interior of the United States refl ects
the township-and-range system, with farms spaced by sec-
tions, half sections, or quarter sections.
The imprint of the rectangular survey system is evi-
dent in Canada as well, where the government adopted a
similar cadastral system as it sought to allocate land in the
Prairie Provinces. In portions of the United States and
Canada different cadastral patterns predominate, how-
ever (Fig. 11.11). These patterns refl ect particular notions
of how land should be divided and used. Among the most
signifi cant are the
metes and bounds survey
approach
adopted along the eastern seaboard, in which natural fea-
tures were used to demarcate irregular parcels of land.
One of the most distinct regional approaches to land divi-
sion can be found in the Canadian Maritimes and in parts
of Quebec, Louisiana, and Texas where a
long-lot survey
system
was implemented. This system divided land into
narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or
canals. It refl ects a particular approach to surveying that
was common in French America.
Many parts of the world do not have cadastral sys-
tems, so fi eld patterns are irregular. But whether regular
or irregular, societies with property ownership have par-
cels of land divided into neat, clearly demarcated seg-
ments. The size and order of those parcels are heavily
infl uenced not just by land partition schemes, but also by
rules about property inheritance. In systems where one
child inherits all of the land—such as the traditional
Germanic practice of
primogeniture
in which all land
Many arguments have been raised about the impacts of
the Green Revolution, both pro and con. How might the
scale at which the Green Revolution is examined affect
the arguments that are made about it? What types of fac-
tors are likely to be considered if the question is, “has the
Green Revolution been good for Asia” as opposed to “has
the Green Revolution been good for a village or a particular
agricultural community in India?”
WHAT IMPRINT DOES AGRICULTURE MAKE
ON THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE?
Flying from the West Coast of the United States to
the East Coast, if you have a window seat you will see the
major imprint agriculture makes on the American cultural
landscape. The green circles standing out in the grain
belts of the country are places where center-pivot irrigation
