Agriculture & Rural Land Use

What this unit covers

The topics below follow the published Human Geo course framework for Unit 5. This unit is worth 12–17% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.

Lessons in this unit

• The Agricultural Revolutions13 min · 3 objectivesTrace the First, Second, and Green (Third) agricultural revolutions · Distinguish subsistence from commercial agriculture by intensity and purpose · Evaluate the benefits and costs of the Green Revolution
• The Von Thünen Model15 min · 3 objectivesExplain the assumptions and concentric rings of the Von Thünen model · Use transportation cost and perishability to predict land use · Evaluate how real-world factors distort the idealized rings
• Settlement Patterns & Food Systems14 min · 3 objectivesCompare clustered, dispersed, and linear rural settlement patterns · Identify survey systems: metes-and-bounds, township-and-range, long-lot · Analyze modern food systems, agribusiness, and their sustainability

Formulas in Unit 5

Every term in Unit 5

All 16 terms we publish for Agriculture & Rural Land Use, with definitions. Reading them through is the fastest way to find the ones you cannot define — then drill those in cram mode until you can produce them without the prompt.

Von Thünen model

Concentric rings of land use around a market: dairy and market gardening nearest, then forest, grain, then ranching, ordered by transport cost and perishability.

Agricultural hearths

Independent origins of domestication — Fertile Crescent, East Asia, Mesoamerica, the Andes — from which farming diffused.

First, Second and Third agricultural revolutions

Domestication; mechanization alongside the Industrial Revolution; and the Green Revolution's high-yield seeds, fertilizer and irrigation.

Green Revolution effects

Sharply raised yields in Mexico and South Asia, at the cost of water use, fertilizer dependence and the exclusion of farmers who could not afford inputs.

Subsistence vs commercial agriculture

Subsistence feeds the household; commercial produces for sale. The shift toward commercial is a core marker of economic development.

Intensive vs extensive agriculture

Intensive uses much labor or capital per unit of land; extensive uses little over large areas. Land cost drives which is chosen.

Shifting cultivation and slash-and-burn

Clearing and burning a plot, farming it briefly, then moving on. Sustainable at low population density, destructive at high.

Pastoral nomadism

Herding animals across marginal land too dry for crops, using transhumance between seasonal pastures.

Plantation agriculture

Large-scale single-crop production for export, typically in the tropics, with roots in colonial land and labor arrangements.

Limitations of Von Thünen

Assumes an isolated state, flat uniform land, one market and equal transport in all directions. Refrigeration and highways have weakened it, but the logic still shows in land values.

Agribusiness and vertical integration

Corporate control of the whole food chain from seed to retail, which lowers consumer prices and squeezes independent farmers.

Monoculture and its risks

One crop over a large area is efficient to plant and harvest but vulnerable to a single pest or disease and depleting to soil.

Sustainable agriculture practices

Crop rotation, no-till farming, contour plowing, terracing, cover crops and integrated pest management.

Food desert and food insecurity

A food desert lacks affordable fresh food within reasonable distance; food insecurity is unreliable access to sufficient nutrition. Both are distribution problems, not production ones.

Rural settlement patterns

Clustered, dispersed and linear. Survey systems — metes and bounds, township and range, long lot — leave a lasting mark on the landscape.

Von Thünen applied globally

The model scales: perishable production still clusters near markets and grain and ranching occupy distant land, now at continental rather than local scale.

What examiners penalize here

• Von Thünen’s rings turn on two variables: **perishability** and **transport cost** (relative to product value and weight). Innermost ring = perishable/heavy/low-value-per-weight; outermost = durable/light/high-value-per-weight. Cite these, not climate or soil, since the model assumes uniform physical conditions.

Practice Human Geo

Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.

Questions about this unit

All 7 units of AP Human Geography

1. Unit 1 · Thinking Geographically
2. Unit 2 · Population & Migration
3. Unit 3 · Cultural Patterns & Processes
4. Unit 4 · Political Patterns & Processes
5. Unit 5 · Agriculture & Rural Land Use
6. Unit 6 · Cities & Urban Land Use
7. Unit 7 · Industrial & Economic Development