Agrarian Spaces: A Comprehensive Guide to Agricultural Landscapes and Practices

Posted on Sep 2, 2024 in Geography

Agrarian Spaces

Definition and Scope

Agrarian spaces are territories dedicated to agricultural activities. While situated within rural areas, not all rural spaces are agrarian. The expansion of urban areas and activities often encroaches upon formerly rural spaces, altering their classification.

Agrarian spaces encompass:

  • Cultivated land
  • Pastures for livestock grazing
  • Meadows for hay production
  • Woodland

Global Distribution and Historical Context

Agrarian spaces exist globally wherever climate permits. Their expansion throughout history is largely attributed to two significant revolutions:

  • The Neolithic Revolution: Beginning around 10,000 BC (5,400 BC in Spain), this period marked the domestication of plants and animals, leading to the gradual spread and evolution of farming practices worldwide over millennia.
  • The Industrial Revolution: This era ushered in mechanized farming techniques, crop rotation, and fertilizers, significantly boosting agricultural productivity.

Consequently, agrarian activities occupy a vast portion of the Earth’s habitable land. Modern, industrialized agriculture continues to expand, while traditional and subsistence farming practices are declining, leading to an uneven global distribution of agricultural systems.

Employment in the Primary Sector

The primary sector, which includes agriculture, exhibits stark contrasts in employment and economic contribution between less developed and highly developed countries:

Less Developed Countries

  • Over 50% of the labor force is engaged in the primary sector.
  • The primary sector contributes over 10% to the GDP/GNI.

Highly Developed Countries

  • Around 10% of the labor force is employed in the primary sector.
  • The primary sector contributes less than 4% to the GDP/GNI.

Factors Influencing Agrarian Spaces

Physical Factors

Climate

Climate plays a crucial role in determining suitable agricultural practices. Different climates favor specific livestock, forests, and crops. Temperature and humidity are critical factors:

  • Temperature: Extreme heat (above 45°C) and cold (below 0°C or even 10°C) are detrimental to most agricultural activities.
  • Humidity: Excessive rainfall leads to soil erosion and weed proliferation, while aridity hinders agricultural development.

Relief

  • Orientation: Influences exposure to sunlight and wind, affecting microclimates.
  • Altitude: Temperature decreases with altitude, limiting suitable plant and animal species. Most crops thrive below 200 meters above sea level, while silviculture and grazing can occur at higher elevations.
  • Slope: Plains and valleys are ideal for agriculture, especially mechanized farming. Terraces are employed on steeper slopes.

Soil

Soil is the foundation of agriculture, providing essential nutrients, water, and oxygen for plant growth. Key soil characteristics include:

  • Depth: Deeper soils are generally more fertile.
  • Texture: Particle size and arrangement affect water retention. Clayey soils retain more water but may require drainage, while sandy soils drain quickly and need frequent irrigation.
  • Porosity: Affects air circulation to plant roots.
  • Chemical and Biological Composition: Determines nutrient content, organic matter, and pH levels. Extreme acidity or alkalinity can be toxic to plants.

Human Factors

Population

  • Growth and High Density: Population growth necessitates increased food production, leading to the expansion of cultivated land and pastures. However, this can result in deforestation, overexploitation of resources, and soil degradation.
  • Decline: Reduced population leads to less demand for agricultural production, potentially resulting in land abandonment, erosion, weed proliferation, and neglect of forests and pastures.

Technological Development

  • Traditional: Simple tools, fallow practices, and natural fertilizers characterize traditional agriculture, limiting productivity improvements.
  • Advanced: The Green Revolution, starting in the 1940s, introduced modern machinery, industrial fertilizers and pesticides, and irrigation infrastructure, significantly increasing productivity. However, this has also led to biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and health hazards associated with chemical use.

Ownership and Labor

  • Ownership: Land ownership can be individual, collective, public, or private, influencing land management practices.
  • Labor: Labor can be provided by the owner, hired workers, or sharecroppers.
  • Property Size: Smallholdings and large estates have different management needs and economic implications.

Globalization

Globalization creates unequal competition between:

  • Subsistence Economies: Peasant families prioritize self-sufficiency, cultivating diverse crops and raising livestock for their own consumption.
  • Market Economies: Businesses specialize in specific crops or livestock for profit maximization, often leading to intensive resource exploitation and potential environmental concerns.

Agricultural Policy

Government policies and international regulations influence agricultural practices. These policies often aim to modernize the sector, redistribute land, enhance competitiveness, or promote environmental sustainability. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is an example, providing subsidies and programs for specific agricultural products.

Agrarian Landscapes: The Structure of Agricultural Space

Agrarian landscapes are characterized by their distinct visual features, primarily the interplay between worked farmland and inhabited spaces.

Worked Space: Farmland

Plots or fields are categorized based on:

  • Size: Small (less than 1 hectare), medium (1-10 hectares), large (greater than 10 hectares)
  • Shape: Regular or irregular
  • Boundaries: Open fields (no physical separation) or closed fields (separated by hedges, trees, walls, or fences). Closed fields can be further organized into terraces or bocage landscapes.
  • Use: Agriculture, livestock raising, or silviculture

Inhabited Space

Settlement patterns in agrarian landscapes can be:

  • Dispersed: Dwellings are scattered across the landscape.
  • Concentrated: Dwellings are clustered in villages or hamlets.
  • Interspersed: A mix of concentrated and dispersed settlements.

The types of dwellings and agricultural facilities also contribute to the unique character of each agrarian landscape.

Agricultural Landscapes and Exploitation Systems

The visual characteristics of agrarian landscapes are shaped by the exploitation systems employed. These systems are categorized based on water use, crop diversity, and land use intensity.

Water Use

  • Irrigated Agriculture: Crops rely on artificial irrigation systems. Examples include rice, cotton, vegetables, fruit trees, and beetroot.
  • Rainfed or Dryland Agriculture: Crops depend solely on rainfall. Examples include pulses, sunflowers, wheat, barley, rye, vines, and olive trees.

Crop Diversity

  • Monoculture: Cultivation of a single crop over a large area, common for crops like cereals, cotton, and coffee.
  • Mixed Cropping: Cultivation of multiple crop species in the same area, such as fruit trees intercropped with tomatoes and lettuce.

Land Use Intensity

  • Intensive Agriculture: Maximizes yield through high capital investment (machinery, technology) and labor, primarily for commercial purposes.
  • Extensive Agriculture: Utilizes fewer technological and human resources, with production intended for sale or self-consumption.

Agricultural Landscapes in Developing Countries

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture

  • Practiced in equatorial and tropical rainforests.
  • Involves clearing vegetation and burning the remains to create fertile plots.
  • Characterized by itinerant cultivation, polyculture, and irregular field shapes.
  • Soil fertility is short-lived (2-3 years), requiring plot abandonment and the cycle to repeat.

Sedentary Rainfed Agriculture

  • Found in tropical regions like the African savanna, South America, and parts of Asia.
  • Involves vegetable plots and fields situated near dwellings.
  • Employs crop rotation (main crop, secondary crop, fallow) and manure fertilization.
  • Allows for permanent settlements due to sustainable soil management.

Irrigated Monsoon Agriculture

  • Practiced in regions with tropical monsoon climates, primarily South and Southeast Asia.
  • Characterized by paddy fields (flooded fields separated by ditches) on alluvial plains and deltas.
  • Highly labor-intensive.

Commercial Agriculture in Developing Countries

Plantation Agriculture

  • Located in coastal areas with humid tropical climates.
  • Focuses on cash crops like cocoa, coffee, cotton, and sugar.
  • Originated in the 16th and 17th centuries.
  • Market-oriented, primarily for export.
  • Characterized by large-scale operations owned by foreign companies or local landowners supplying them.
  • Relies heavily on monoculture.

Commercial Agriculture in Developed Countries

  • Driven by profit maximization and market demand.
  • Highly mechanized with significant capital investment in machinery, infrastructure, and research.
  • Characterized by specialization and monoculture.
  • In Europe, historical land tenure systems (e.g., minifundium) persist alongside modern practices.
  • In newer agricultural regions like the USA, Canada, and Argentina, large, regular plots dominate, enabling extensive yet highly productive farming.
  • While industrial agriculture prevails, organic farming is gaining traction as a more environmentally sustainable, albeit less profitable, alternative.