Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
where the offi cial police have little control, and drug
lords have imposed reigns of terror over swaths of the
countryside in parts of Central and South America,
Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. The
drug trade depends on the voracious appetite for mind-
altering substances in North America and Europe in
particular.
The supply of marijuana in the United States tra-
ditionally comes from Mexico and Canada, as the DEA
has reported. But an increasing amount of marijuana
consumed in the United States is grown in the United
States. Since 1996, a total of 16 states in the United
States have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes.
In addition to Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan, Maine,
Vermont, New Jersey and Rhode Island, most of the
states with medicinal marijuana are in the western
United States. Marijuana production for legal and ille-
gal consumption in the United States is estimated to be
“the largest cash crop in the United States.” An April
2011 article in the
New York
Times
valued marijuana
production at $40 billion, “with California, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington the top fi ve produc-
tion states,” despite the fact that medicinal marijuana is
not legal in Tennessee or Kentucky.
Marijuana production has more than a monetary
impact. Energy analyst Evan Mills distributed a study in
April 2011 that estimates the energy consumed in pro-
ducing marijuana in the United States costs about $5 bil-
lion a year and accounts for 1 percent of all power con-
sumed in the United States. Marijuana grown outdoors
has much lower energy costs than marijuana grown
indoors. Growers plant crops on public lands, especially
in the west, because the remote location of public lands
makes detection less likely for growers. Also, the land is
public and therefore not owned by any one person to
whom a crop could be traced. Marijuana grown indoors
consumes massive amounts of electricity. The cost of
indoor production includes grow lamps that are the
kinds used in operating rooms, dehumidifi ers, air condi-
tioners, electric generators, water pumps, heaters, carbon
dioxide generators, ventilation systems, and electrical
control systems.
of literally billions of people. Even city dwellers in many
parts of the world are involved in small-scale agricultural
activities—cultivating or raising livestock in small plots
of land around their dwellings, on rooftop gardens, or in
community gardens. Such practices are encouraged in
some places—notably China—but more often they are
ignored, or even discouraged. Yet the contribution urban
agriculture can make to the food security of city dwellers
is attracting growing attention, and it is likely to grow in
importance in the coming years.
Political Infl uences on Agriculture
As we noted above, the European colonial period provides
a stunning example of the impact of political circum-
stances on agriculture. Consider, for example, one of the
most signifi cant contemporary
cash crops
: cotton.
Colonialism encouraged the production of plantation-
scale cotton in many regions of the world (e.g., India), and
colonial powers established a trading network that led to
the globalization of the cotton industry.
Cotton cultivation expanded greatly during the
nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution pro-
duced machines for cotton ginning, spinning, and weav-
ing that increased productive capacity, brought prices
down, and put cotton goods within the reach of mass
markets. As with sugar, the colonial powers laid out large-
scale cotton plantations, sometimes under irrigation.
Cotton cultivation was also promoted on a smaller scale
in numerous other countries: in Egypt's Nile Delta, in
the Punjab region shared by Pakistan and India, and in
Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, and Brazil. The colonial pro-
ducers received low prices for their cotton, and the
European industries prospered as cheap raw materials
were converted into large quantities of items for sale at
home and abroad.
Wealthier countries continue to buy cotton, and cot-
ton sales remain important for some former colonies. But
they now compete with cotton being grown in the United
States, Northeast China, and Central Asia. Moreover,
cotton is in competition today with synthetic fi bers such
as nylon and rayon. As global supply and demand shifts in
response to changing markets and new alternatives, econ-
omies that have been built around cotton production can
go through wrenching adjustments.
Even as countries emerged from colonial control,
they were left with a legacy of large landholdings owned
or controlled by wealthy individuals or business entities.
That legacy contributed to uprisings among the rural
poor in places such as Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala.
Efforts on the part of governmental authorities in some
ex-colonies to confront this situation provide a different
Informal Agriculture
Small-scale informal agricultural activities are also miss-
ing from maps of global agricultural patterns, yet these
play an important role in the contemporary world.
Millions of people cultivate small plots of land in and
around their homes for domestic consumption or to
trade informally with others. These activities are not
captured by formal agricultural statistics, but the food
that is grown in this fashion plays a vital role in the lives
