Unit V- Agriculture
V. Agriculture and Rural Land Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13–17%
A. Development and diffusion of agriculture
1. Neolithic Agricultural Revolution
2. Second Agricultural Revolution
3. Green Revolution
4. Modern Commercial Agriculture
B. Major agricultural production regions
1. Agricultural systems associated with major bioclimatic zones
2. Variations within major zones and effects of markets
3. Linkages and flows among regions of food production and consumption
C. Rural land use and settlement patterns
1. Models of agricultural land use, including von Thünen’s model
2. Settlement patterns associated with major agriculture types
3. Land use/land cover change, irrigation, conservation
(desertification, deforestation)
D. Modern commercial agriculture
1. Biotechnology, including genetically modified plants and animals
2. Spatial organization and diffusion of industrial agriculture
3. Organic farming and local food production
4. Environmental impacts of agriculture
Key questions guiding the chapters in this unit:

What is Political Geography and how do geographers study it at various levels of scale?

What is meant by territoriality, how is it expressed on Earth, and how does geographer
Robert Sack’s view of this concept differ from anthropologist Robert Ardrey’s view?

What is the difference between a state, a nation, and a nation-state?

What was the role of the European model in the development and evolution of today’s
modern state system?

How do boundaries evolve and what processes or stages help define them through time?

What are the primary areas of emphasis of geopolitics, a century-old subfield of political
geography?

How did the forces of colonialism help hold together widely separated areas with
disparate economies and cultures?

Define World Systems Analysis and discuss at least two examples of how it operates in
today’s world.

Compare and contrast the Mackinder’s Heartland Theory with Spykman’s Rimland
Theory.

What role do core areas and various types of capital cities play in a state?

What internal and external forces help hold states together and, conversely, tear them
apart?

What is supranationalism and how has it contributed to the world’s economic and
political interdependence?

Discuss the role of the League of Nations and later, the United Nations, in fostering
international security and cooperation?

What were the key provisions of the UNCLOS Process?

Name at least two examples of regional multinational unions operating in Europe and
discuss some of the impacts of these unifying organizations. Speculate on some of the
reasons why the “most significant development of its kind in the world today”) happened
first in Europe and not in some other part of the world.

Why is devolution occurring in an increasing countries at the present time – and how
does ethnonationalism contribute to promoting devolution?

Spatially and politically speaking, why does devolution happen most often on the edges
of states?

Discuss devolution in the former Soviet Union/Russian Federation as a case study that
illustrates some of the key concepts included in Unit V.
Concepts:
Annexation
Irredentism
Antarctica
Israel/Palestine
Apartheid
Landlocked
Balkanization
Law of the Sea
Border landscape
Lebanon
Boundary, disputes (definitional; locational; operational;
Mackinder, Halford J.
allocational)
Boundary, origin (antecedent; subsequent; superimposed; relic) Manifest destiny
Boundary, process (definition; delimitation; demarcation)
Median-line principle
Boundary, type (natural/physical; ethnographic/cultural;
Microstate
geometric)
Buffer state
Ministate
Capital
Nation
Centrifugal
National iconography
Centripetal
Nation-state
City-state
Colonialism
Confederation
Conference of Berlin (1884)
Core/periphery
Decolonization
Devolution
Domino theory
EEZ
Electoral regions
Enclave/exclave
Ethnic conflict
European Union
Federal
Forward capital
Frontier
Geopolitics
Gerrymander
Global commons
Heartland/rimland
Immigrant states
International organization
Iron Curtain
Nunavut
Raison d’être
Reapportionment
Regionalism
Religious conflict
Reunification
Satellite state
Self-determination
Shatter belt
Sovereignty
State
Stateless ethnic groups
Stateless nation
Suffrage
Supranationalism
Territorial disputes
Territorial morphology (compact; fragmented;
elongated; prorupt; perforated)
Territoriality
Theocracy
Treaty ports
UNCLOS
Unitary
USSR collapse
Women’s enfranchisement