7. Agriculture

• HDI

  Metric compiled by the United Nations Development Programme that focuses upon three basic dimensions of human development: long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living
• HDI first launched

  1990
• Strategies of International Development

  • Expansion of Trade with Less Developed Countries
  • Private Capital Flows to Less Developed Countries
  • Foreign Aid from Developed Nations
• Food security

  All people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO, World Bank)
• Task: ensure food security and improve nutrition
• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

  UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972), Offices across 130 countries worldwide, Food security and regular access to enough high-quality food, FAO Conference on Climate Change (2008) topics: High food prices: consequences and solutions, Climate change and food, Transboundary pests and diseases, Bioenergy and food security
• FAO created in

  Quebec City, Canada 1945

• FAO moved to Rome

  1951
• FAO Members

  • 194 countries
  • European Union
• FAOSTAT is the source of agricultural information and statistics
• Agriculture

  Includes forestry, hunting, and fishing, as well as cultivation of crops and livestock production
• Commercial Agriculture

  Profitable agricultural production and marketing system, in which agricultural products are competitive locally, regionally, and internationally
• Smallholder Agriculture

  Subsistence farming for household food consumption
• Sustainable Agriculture

  Conserves land, water, and plant and animal genetic resources, and is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable
• Transportation costs increase at a rate proportional to distance from the central market
• Isolated state with

  Large City serving as the only market.
• ·       German agronomist and economist

  ·       The Isolated State (1826) book

  Johann von Thünen
• Isolated State

  • idealized agricultural region no extraneous disturbances in the idealized landscape.
  • no market restrictions,
  • no social classes
  • no governmental interventions
• Agriculture rings

  1.     Intensive cultivation (milk, fresh fruit, vegetables)

  2.     Forestry (timber, firewood for fuel and building materials)

  3.     Extensive Farming (fields crops rye, oats, clover, potatoes, barley) not so dependent on the closeness to the market.

  4. Stock Farming-livestock