13.2.4: Commercial Agriculture

Commercial Agriculture

Commercial agriculture, generally practiced in core countries outside the tropics, is developed primarily to generate products for sale to food processing companies. An exception is plantation farming, a form of commercial agriculture which persists in developing countries side by side with subsistence. Unlike the small subsistence farms (1-2 hectares/2-5 acres), the average of the commercial farm size is over 150 hectares/370 acres (178 ha/193 acres U.S.) and, being mechanized, many of them are family owned and operated. Mechanization also determines the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, with many developed countries being even below two percent of the total employment, such as Israel, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Moreover, as the result of industrialization and urbanization, many developed countries continue to lose significant areas of agricultural land. North America, for example, had 28.3 percent agricultural land out of the total land area in 1961 and 26 percent in 2014. The European Union decreased its agricultural land from 54.7 percent to 43.8 percent for the same period, during which some countries recorded outstanding decreases, such as Ireland from 81.9 to 64.8 percent, the United Kingdom from 81.8 to 71.2 percent, and Denmark from 74.6 to 62.2 percent to mention only a few. In addition to the high level of mechanization, in order to increase their productivity, commercial farmers use scientific advances in research and technology such as the Global Positioning System (autonomous precision seed-planting robot, intelligent systems for animal monitoring, savings in field vegetable-growing through the use of a GPS automatic steering system), and satellite imagery (finding efficient routes for selective harvesting based on remote sensing management).

Climate regions also play an important role in determining agricultural regions. In developed countries, these regions can be individualized as six types of commercial agriculture: mixed crop and livestock, grain farming, dairy farming, livestock ranching, commercial gardening and fruit farming, and Mediterranean agriculture

Mixed Crop and Livestock

Mixed crop and livestock farming extends over much of the eastern United States, central and western Europe, western Russia, Japan, and smaller areas in South America (Brazil and Uruguay) and South Africa. The rich soils, typically involving crop rotation, produce high yields primarily of corn and wheat, adding also soybeans, sugar beets, sunflower, potatoes, fruit orchards, and forage crops for livestock. In practice, there is a wide variation in mixed systems. At a higher level, a region can consist of individual specialized farms (corn, for example) and service systems that together act as a mixed system. Other forms of mixed farming include cultivation of different crops on the same field or several varieties of the same crop with different life cycles, using space more efficiently and spreading risks more uniformly. The same farm may grow cereal crops or orchards, for example, and keep cattle, sheep, pigs, or poultry (Figure 10.13).

Figure | Crop-livestock Integration Sheep grazing under tall-stemmed fruit trees (the Netherlands). Author | FAO Source | FAO License | © FAO. Used with permission.

Grain Farming

Commercial grain farming is an extensive and mechanized form of agriculture. This is a development in the continental lands of the mid-latitudes (mostly between 30° and 55° North and South latitudes), in regions that are too dry for mixed crop and livestock farming. The major world regions of commercial grain farming are located in Eurasia (from Kiev, in Ukraine, along southern Russia, to Omsk in western Siberia and Kazakhstan) and North America (the Great Plains). In the southern hemisphere, Argentina, in South America, has a large region of commercial grain farming, and Australia has two such areas, one in the southwest and another in the southeast. Commercial grain farming is highly specialized and, generally, one single crop is grown. The most important crop grown is wheat (winter and spring), used to make flour (Figure 10.14). The wheat farms are very large, ranging from 240 to 16,000 hectares (593-40000 acres). The average size of a farm in the U.S. is about 1000 acres (405 hectares). In these areas land is cheap, making it possible for a farmer to own very large holdings.

Figure | World Commercial Grain Farming Author | CIET NCERT Source | NROER License | CC BY SA 4.0

Dairy Farming

Dairy farming is a branch of agriculture designed for long-term production of milk, processed either on a farm or at a dairy plant, for sale. It is practiced near large urban areas in both developed and developing countries. The location of this type of farm is dictated by the highly perishable milk. The ring surrounding a city where fresh milk is economically viable, supplied without spoiling, is about a 100-mile radius. In the 1980s and 1990s, robotic milking systems were developed and introduced in some developing countries, principally in the EU (Figure 10.15). There is an important variation in the pattern of dairy production worldwide. Many countries that are large producers consume most of this internally, while others, in particular New Zealand, export a large percentage of their production, some from the organic farms.

Figure | Rotary Milking Parlor Author | Gunnar Richter Source | Wikimedia Commons License | CC BY SA 3.0

Figure | Calves at Organic Dairy Farm Author | Julia Rubinic Source | Wikimedia Commons License | CC BY 2.0

Livestock Ranching

Ranching is the commercial grazing of livestock on large tracts of land. It is an efficient way to raise livestock to provide meat, dairy products, and raw materials for fabrics. Contemporary ranching has become part of the meat-processing industry. Primarily, ranching is practiced on semiarid or arid land where the vegetation is too sparse and the soil too poor to support crops, being a vital part of economies and rural development around the world. In Australia, like in the Americas, ranching is a way of life (Figure 10.17). In the United States, near Greeley, Colorado, there is the world’s largest cattle feedlot, with over 120,000 head, a subsidiary of the food giant ConAgra (Figure 10.18). The largest beef-producing company in the world is the Brazilian multinational corporation JBS-Friboi. Argentina and Uruguay are the world’s top per capita consumers of beef. China is the leading producer of pig meat while the United States leads in the production of chicken and beef.

Figure: Interstate 5, Kern County, CA. This massive feedlot operation is essentially a "beef factory" serving Southern California. Grain and silage is brought to this site to fatten cattle for slaughter. Angus and Hereford breeds dominate.

Figure | Ranching Author | William Henry Jackson Source | Wikimedia Commons License | Public Domain

Figure | Feedlot in the Texas Panhandle Author | User “H2O” Source | Wikimedia Commons License | CC BY SA 3.0