Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut pizza (all three
are part of YUM! corporation, which also owns A&W and
Long John Silvers. YUM! is a spin-off of PepsiCo).
Analyzing the global consolidation of media, the
global networking of NGOs concerned with develop-
ment, and the global presence of retail corporations helps
us see the diversity of global networks, with some increas-
ingly centralized and others increasingly disaggregated.
Aside from the spatial characteristics of the network itself,
what is interesting for geographers is the impact of these
networks on local places, for globalized networks do not
affect individual places in the same way. People interact
with the global network, shaping it, resisting it, embracing
it, and responding to globalization in unique ways.
the people in the cities by bringing their products to mar-
kets in the cities. With the industrialization of agriculture
(chapter 11), the distance between farmers and consumers
has increased, fi guratively and literally. Consumers often
do not consider the source of their food, and some pro-
cessed foods look so little like natural foods that it is all
too easy to forget farmers were involved in producing the
food. Container ships and refrigerated trucking and ship-
ping (chapter 12) now allow consumers in cold regions of
the world in winter months to purchase fresh fruits and
vegetables grown thousands of miles away, in warmer cli-
mates. In 2007, when the United States conducted its last
Census of Agriculture, it found the number of principal
operators of farms in the United States had grown by
4 percent, to 2.2 million people. According to geographer
Steven Schnell, one of the reasons the number of farm-
ers in the United States has increased is the growth in the
number of
community-supported agriculture
groups,
known as CSAs (Fig. 14. 8). Schnell explains that CSAs
Community-Supported Agriculture
In the von Thunen model (Chapter 11), farms surrounded
urban areas in a regular pattern and provided fresh food to
CSAS IN THE CONTIGUOUS
UNITED STATES, 2011
0
200
400
600
800
1000 Kilometers
0
200
400
600 Miles
Data from www.localharvest.com
Figure 14.8
CSAs in the contiguous United States, 2011.
Schnell (2007) found that CSAs are more
likely to be found in urban or suburban areas where people have higher levels of education and
are actively involved in discussing politics.
Courtesy of
: Local Harvest.org
