Chapter 10 Agriculture Reading Questions
NAME:_________________________
Key Issue 1: Where did agriculture originate?
1. What is agriculture and where did it originate?
2. Where is hunting and gathering still practiced today?
3. Compare vegetative planting and seed agriculture.
4. Explain the location of the first seed agriculture.
5. Explain how seed agriculture has diffused.
6. Compare subsistence and commercial agriculture in relation to purpose, labor force, machinery, and
farm size.
Key Issue 2: Where are agricultural regions in less developed countries?
7. Explain the process of shifting cultivation.
8. What is the future outcome of shifting cultivation? Criticisms?
9. Explain the characteristics of pastoral nomadism.
10. What is intensive subsistence agriculture?
11. Compare intensive subsistence agriculture with wet rice dominant and with wet rice not dominant.
12. What is plantation farming and is it still common today?
Key Issue 3: Where are agricultural regions in more developed countries?
13. What are some characteristics of mixed crop and livestock farming?
14. Compare crop rotation to shifting cultivation.
15. Explain the importance of dairy farms near urban areas.
16. Describe the difference between winter and spring wheat, including geography.
17. How did the railroad contribute to the cattle market in the 1800s?
18. What is Mediterranean agriculture? Where is it practiced?
19. Create a rough sketch of Von Thunen’s model and analyze each ring.
Key Issue 4: Why do farmers face economic difficulties?
20. What three policies are used to attack problems of excess productive capacity?
21. What is sustainable agriculture?
22. Who is Esther Boserup and what was her theory?
23. What are GMOs?
24. Describe the two main practices introduced during the Green Revolution.
25. What role does population play with Africa’s food-supply crisis?