Module 3: Crop Production

Question 1

What cash crops were traded during colonization?

Answer 1

coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco

Question 2

where did industrialized farming originate from in history?

Answer 2

colonialism, slavery >:(

Question 3

what is migrant labor?

Answer 3

brought in migrants from other countries to fill in jobs on farms to make sure supply of food was not disrupted during WW2

Question 3

What is price support?

Answer 3

common globally, prevent price from falling below a certain level; help to stabilize price; enforced by government

Question 4

what is comparative advantage? Give an example

Answer 4

discourage crop diversity- focuses on monoculture cropping
eg. prairies specialize in wheat and can do it large scale

Question 5

Who benefits from industrialization?

Answer 5

consumers->convenience, big companies like McDonalds-> buying other subcomponents of food value chain, distribution company, etc.

Question 6

What challenges are faced by Canadian farmers?

Answer 6

decreasing young farmers, losing farm land, low net income, unrestrained power of big corporations, high debts

Question 7

what causes the gap between net income and what is earned for farmers?

Answer 7

gap is the money used to pay off all the loans from machinery, seeds, etc. from big corporations

Answer 8

System is viable only for massive operations

Question 9

How does globalization impact farmers?

Answer 9

more competitive for farmers, less competitive for corporations and maximize profits for shareholders

Question 10

What is the anthropological fix?

Answer 10

fewer negative environmental impacts

Question 11

What is the technological fix?

Question 12

What are the benefits of agroecology?

Answer 12

preserve natural resources and biodiversity, boost nutrition and health, integrate diff types of knowledge, produce more with fewer resources

Question 13

What is the first agricultural revolution?

Answer 13

enabled emergence of first city- states.
Common farming practices included the use of slash-and-burn to clear land for planting, the use of animals and crops, rotations that guaranteed soil fertility, and human labor.

Question 14

What is the second agricultural revolution?

Answer 14

fear of hunger lead to increase adoption of new implements in agriculture (eg. machinery replacing human labor/ horsepower), plus intensification of irrigation systems.

Question 15

What is the Malthusian catastrophe?

Answer 15

human populations were growing exponentially, while food production was growing only arithmetically, and that difference would lead to future hunger

Question 16

What is the third agricultural revolution/green revolution?

Answer 16

introduction of chemical fertilizers, synthetic herbicides and pesticides, and high-yield crops, including hybrids; discovery of a new process to synthetize nitrogen

Question 17

Who is the father of the green revolution?

Answer 17

Norman Borlaug

Question 18

How was large scale monoculture enabled?

Answer 18

by specific production methods, government support, and favorable commodity prices, among other reasons.

Question 19

Define production methods

Answer 19

associated with the utilization of large-scale machinery and irrigation systems;
strategies and techniques used to intensify food production (chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides; delinked system of production; intensive irrigation; adoption of plant breeding techniques, from hybrid seeds to transgenic seeds

Question 20

What is the impact of high transaction costs?

Answer 20

small - midsized farms are disappearing due to large corporations

Question 21

What is one strategy used by small to midsized farms to handle these challenging circumstances?

Answer 21

aggregation of production into cooperatives that market their produce collectively and therefore take advantage of economies of scale