139 exam 2 Flashcards
Crude birth rate (CBR)
i. Not adjusting numbers for anything
ii. Births per 1000 people per year
iii. Geographically uneven—Africa = high, USA = low
Crude death rate (CDR)
i. Number of deaths per 1000 people per year
ii. Also geographically uneven—Africa/peripheries = high, USA/cores = low
Rates of natural increase
i. Crude birth rate minus crude death rate
ii. Greatest rates tend to be in peripheries and some semi-peripheries
iii. Slow increase and possible decrease in cores
1. Decreasing in Germany and Russia
iv. Politics, economics, and infrastructure are factors
1. Public health
2. Drawing of political boundary makes significant effects on survival of baby
Demographic transtition
i. In multiple countries in last centuries have period of growing birth rates (population) b/c CBR and CDR have been out of sync
ii. Phases:
1. High CDR and CBR are both high
2. CDR falls and CBR stays same—due to vaccinations, clean water, etc.
3. Birth rate falls
4. Both are low
Demographic momentum
i. Geographically uneven
1. Interested in biological gender (men and women)
a. Differences are caused by war, slavery, etc.
The tendency for growing population to continue growing after a fertility decline because once this happens a country moves to a different stage in the demographic transition model
Population pyramid
i. Peripheries: pyramid is wide at bottom → population increases
1. Issues with peripheries based on core-periphery model
ii. Cores: pyramid is more of a bar → no population change
iii. **Different population issues due to differences in pyramid
1. Time, dynamics, age of population, where, etc.
2. Where, political links, and structure of economics
Carrying capacity
Maximum number of people that can be supported by given unit of area (i.e. resources)
Overshoot
i. When a population’s demand on an ecosystem to regenerate consumed resources
ii. Up and down over carrying capacity line
Diminishing returns
Form of Malthusian limit;
The principle that, at some point, adding more of a variable input, such as labor, to the same amount of a fixed input, such as capital, will cause the marginal product of the variable input to decline
Problems with extending the carrying capacity concept to humans
i. Temporal, spatial, and social variation in consumption
ii. Needs vs. wants
iii. Technology (resources are culturally AND technologically defined)
iv. The capacity of an ecosystem to absorb waste
Malthusian view on relationship between population, resources, and technology
Mostly concerned with conditioned that gave mortality and vice versa
Implications:
a. Population growth is limited by agricultural resources
b. Land degradation is more likely as one approaches resources limit
c. Population growth leads to declining quality of life one approaches resources
Contingencies:
a. Migration and birth control
b. Means of production
c. Culture
d. Relations of production
e. **can lead to Boserupian elasticity
If he is right, Amazonia, Congo, and Sahel should be inhabitanted
Boserupian view on relationship between population, resources, and technology
- Trying to improve agricultural yields in sub-Saharan
a. Much better responses from high density areas
b. Is Malthus wrong? - Resources are dependent on population (not other way around)
- Argument:
a. Intensification (technologies, new discoveries, etc.) increases productivity of land, but reduces returns per unit of labor (need much more labor)
b. Given diminishing returns, farmers will only intensify agricultural production when necessary (i.e. population increases)
i. Problem creates need for solution
c. Population on growth induces technological advances and higher living - If he is correct, China and India should not exist
The numbers game
Too many people?
i. If wanted to live on need only, whole world could live in Europe solely (Germany to be exact) and food comes from Europe area
ii. If lived on wants, whole population could live on continent of Russia and produce food in Africa
Private property regime
i. Individuals and firms are involved
ii. Supported by public bureaucracy (rules)
Common property regime
i. Clearly defined social group (village owns)
ii. Supported by councils and participatory governance—how to manage resources; no free access
Open access
i. System resource procurement
ii. No one many be excluded
iii. No rules
Common pool resources
i. Access restrictions difficult to enforce—i.e. fishing in Atlantic
ii. Rules difficult to enforce
Structure and purpose of ‘Tragedy of commons’ models
i. Model is for simplification
ii. Want to hold some of complexities still and only look at few variables
1. Land tenure—rules and processes to assessing properties
2. Resources
3. Overshoot—issue between population and resources
iii. Must make assumptions and conditions to make model work
iv. Spits out inferences, and then get to conclusions
v. Inputs (assumptions) → Resource, Land tenure, Overshoot → Outputs → Conclusion
**Model mechanics of Hardin’s tragedy of the commons
- Gov’t regulation and redistribution through taxes (very ineffective)
- Divide commons into private parcels
- Gov’t ownership = command and control (ineffective)
Problems to Hardin’s model
Conceptual conflation and flawed assumptions
1. Based model on non-existing situation
Flawed assumptions and conditions
1. Legal reason for privatizing common leads to erosion of soil BUT…not enough scientific evidence
Flawed outputs
- Tragedy of privatization
a. i.e. Masasai people of East Africa
Flawed inference
- Private parcels and mutual coercion
a. Hardin went straight to conclusion (privatization from environmental degradation)
b. Conditions favorable to sustaining communal governance (socio-ecological and governance)
Contrary examples to Hardin’s model
Isle of Axholme, North Lincolnshire, England
- Communal investment of infrastructure
- 400 years of common property exercised
Swiss “Alpwirtschaft”
- Moving cattle around so environmental degradation doesn’t happen
- Based on common property regulations
Israel Kibbutz
1. Common property AND common resources regime
Fallow
Letting field rest to regain organic and environmental benefits
Shifting cultivation
i. Moving field productions over time
ii. Allowing fields to go into fallow
Slash and burn
i. Ecological consequences: loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation
ii. Example in Rondonia, Brazil
iii. Existing vegetation is slashed/cut and burned before new seeds are planted
Swidden agroforestry
i. Hanunoo, Mindoro, Philippines
ii. Very important to get even and proper burn
1. Take care of pests; ash is nutrients for soil
iii. 40-50 different crops
1. Up to 125 cultivars (Different varieties of crops)
Landesque capital
i. Systems that are permanent—sustainable food production that have been in place for millennia
ii. Applying labor, skills, etc. securing production over long term
iii. Type of labor-intensive agriculture
iv. Going to improve the land through long term thinking/production
Terra preta (soil)
i. Landesque capital
ii. End result of human cultivation
iii. Get this benefit through slashing and burning
iv. Want to burn wood (after slashing) where little wet → reduced conditions
v. Biochar → mined for charcoal (type of fertilizer)
vi. In tropics—adding biochar and household waste; setting up very favorable soil situations
Plaggen soil
i. Environmental consequences after 2nd agricultural revolution
ii. End results of agriculture
1. Improving soil as cultivating
iii. Adding dung and fertilizer
iv. Northern temperate areas (NW Europe)—adding biomass
Raised fields
i. Mound planting surface (elevate)
ii. Can be used for extended periods of time
iii. Improve soil/area by concentrating ash and coal into planting area
iv. Nutrient-poor, sandy, very acidic, saturated soils
v. Provide drainage and water storage
vi. Thinking long term uses
vii. i.e. Chinampas in S. America
Terraces
i. Andes mountains
ii. Must worry about erosion, etc.
iii. Different crops at different elevations
iv. Glaciers up top are sources of water
v. i.e. Colca Valley, Peru
Irrigation
i. Ancient Egyptian irrigation
1. Capture water from Nile River
2. Whole temporal spatial rhythm so all can continue cultivating and growing crops
ii. Mesopotamia irrigation
1. Euphrates supplies and Tigris drains
2. Mostly worked but issues with excess water evaporation, leaving salty deposits
Middle East ecological triad
i. Working relationships with pastoralists and agriculturalists
1. When plants done in area, pastoralists come in and graze farm and fertilizer area with dung
Gbout system
i. Cultivating deserts before desalinization plants
1. Palm trees at way bottom underground; begins with water supply
2. Plant crops that use lots of shade with new water technology
3. Minimizes evaporative losses
Qanat
i. Cultivating deserts before desalinization plants
ii. Southern Iran
iii. Possible to farm in extreme environments–very arid with no surface water
iv. Deposits sediments right outside of canyon that was washed up when traveling through canyon
v. Tunnel in until intersect with ground water and is then used to irrigate the field
Rice terracing
i. Chinese irrigation
ii. During Shang Dynasty
iii. How you farm mountainous, steep areas
iv. When plant, needs water; when grows, no water; must be timed exactly right
Closed nutrient farming (Jitang & Tambak)
i. Combination of farming and fish/shrimp farming
ii. Ponds were vegetarian fish
iii. Take fish poop and use as fertilizer
iv. What isn’t used for humans are given to fish
v. Used all products and waste products
Agroecology
study of ecological processes that operate in agricultural production systems
Where are different labor intensive systems of agriculture practiced and why?
i. Brazil, Philippines, Andes mountains, Eypt/Nile River, Mesopotamia, China
ii. Had to sustain their civilization with food
Social and ecological consequences of shifting cultivation systems
‘Slash and burn’
- Short term thinking
- Maximizing profits
- Thinking of object of production
- Cause of environmental degradation
‘Swiss agroforestry’
- Healthy soils
- Rights of determination
- Land is their home
Advantages of labor intensive agriculture
- Agrodiversity and biodiversity
a. Have particular resistance to disease, already long term adaptations, etc. - Soil health
- Long term yields and risk minimization
a. Work in marginal fields
b. Different mind set than capital intensive system - Food sovereignty at household level—self sufficient and self determination
- Original organic agriculture
- Original sustainable agriculture—centuries and millennia; environmental change
Disadvantages of labor intensive agriculture
- Occasionally labor intensive systems have failed
- Minimal capital creation
- Minimizes non agricultural specialization
- It’s hard work!
Means of production in capital intensive agriculture
- Depends on irrigation
2. Many seeds used today are genetically modified
Relations of production in capital intensive agriculture
- Farms are at bottom of ladder—decisions are not really theirs
a. Dependent on things happening all over globe
b. Equally dependent of physical environment and global, local, political issues/policies
Food commodity chain
Agricultural inputs → farm production → product processing → food distribution → food production
Determining where all ingredients/food has been produced/grown geographically
Green revolution
i. Norman Borlaug → father of Green Rev.
ii. Move crops to tropics to get 3 generations worth of food—speeds up development
iii. Find out optimal needs for seeds and provide them with agrochemicals
iv. Main advantage of capital intensive are the remarkable yields
v. Food production has out stripped population growth
Erosion
.
Soil fertility (Nitrogen fixation)
- Main source of nitrogen is the air we breathe
- Get into soil through atmospheric fixation (lightning) or biological means
- Today we have substituted for chemical fixation
Soil fertility (phosphorous fixation)
- Very complex in absorption/accessibility
- Solution: put enough phosphorous that knows it needs
a. Both inorganic and organic sources - Net result: excess phosphorous in environment
- Main source = phosphorous mining—ground; guano (poop of birds)
Eutrophication
i. Excess richness in nutrients especially in lake/body of water
1. Causes dense growth of plant life and death of animal growth from excess oxygen; from land run off
ii. When algai blooms die, they sink to bottom and absorb oxygen at bottom of lake
iii. Cause of loss of biodiversity—killing species
Salinization
i. Too much salt
ii. East coast in USA, N. Europe, E. Asia = big issue
iii. Total area equipped for irrigation are increasing
1. As wwater evaporates, salts are left behind
a. Tremendous salt accumulations
b. Then add more water which adds to salt
Genetically modified organism
i. Unintended consequences—eliminating species by accident; monarch example
Food pipeline
i. Decrease in groundwater caused by irrigation of area (i.e. Kansas)
ii. Distributing networks and the losses that occur in those distribution networks
Agriculture paradox
i. Issue: profit maximization
1. Exploits relations and not means
2. Commodity markets are global
a. Transcend laws
b. Not what gov’t wants
Food sovereignty
Objectives:
- Food producers and food consumers together deciding what constitutes as healthy, sufficient, and culturally appropriate food
- Focused on the food producers—anti vertical ladder
- Local food networks—anti global food commodity chains
- Labor intensive agriculture and diversified production
- Self-determination
define: globalization of agriculture
Advantages of capital intensive agriculture
- Capital gain
Disadvantages of capita intensive agriculture
.
Social and ecological consequences of green revolution in Sonora
i. Habitat and biodiversity loss
ii. Effects on local water supply—shortages or too much water creating salinized soils
iii. Some households that have done very well and some that didn’t—winners/losers
iv. Get go into so much debt from this
v. Fewer people farming, but get growth of urban area—expanding city (rural to urban migration)
vi. Changes in diet
vii. Loss of farms
Where is capital intensive agriculture practiced and why?
i. Core countries and increasingly practiced in semi-peripheries
