Modern agrarian landscapes

6. MODERN AGRARIAN LANDSCAPES - Farming has gone form traditional subsistence agriculture to industrial agriculture, focused on foreign markets.

- Characteristics: - Monoculture and irrigation - Mechanisation of farm work - The use of chemicals (pesticides and fertilisers) - The use of selected seeds - An increase in harvest per hectare - A reduction in labour costs - New farming techinques, that make i possible to obtain products at any time of the year: - These include greenhouses and farming under plastic - These techniques require an important capital investment in facilities, technical resources and seed selection.

6. MODERN AGRARIAN LANDSCAPES 1. PLANTATION AGRICULTURE - Common in tropical regions of America, Asia and Africa.

- Each plantation specialises in one product (coffe, bananas, tea, sugarcane, cacao are important products) - The product is always destined for export - the local population cannot use the land to roduce for themselves.

- It uses a lot of local labour, with very low salaries, to work during the critical periods, planting and harvesting.

6. MODERN AGRARIAN LANDSCAPES 2.EXTENSIVE, MECHANISED MONOCULTURE

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Common in countries whose agrarian structure is made up of large plots (U.S, Canada, Australia and Russia).

Extensive farming Highly mechanised industrial activity manage by small nuber of farmers It is specialised in cereal monoculture growing wheat, corn and sunflowers.

Farms are managed as a business Agrobusinesses, which control production and the sale of the crops.

The main problem is overproduction The autorities of these countries promote the export of crops by giving farmers financial incentives (subvenciones) and protecting exports.

In this way, they rotect their domestic crops from foreing competition with lower production costs.