Plantation countries. Latin America

In similar natural conditions (also primarily in the humid tropics) develops plantation economy. The rapidly growing demand in Europe during the industrial revolution for "colonial" goods was not satisfied by small-scale native production, and the capital of the metropolitan countries took matters into its own hands. Against the backdrop of a boundless sea of small farms in developing countries, plantations stand out for their large size, specialization in one, less often two or three crops, and mass output of products completely intended for the market. The plantations employ a large army of hired workers, who in the recent past were very poorly paid. Cultivation preference is given to perennial crops that provide a relatively uniform load work force during a year.
Tea (India, Sri Lanka, Kenya), rubber (Malaysia, Indonesia), bananas (Ecuador, Colombia and other countries of Latin America), sugarcane (Cuba), coffee (Brazil, Colombia), cocoa (Ghana), oil palm (Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone). Production was located in separate centers in areas most favorable in natural terms for a particular crop and conveniently located for the export of products, although such factors as the possibility of providing the newly created farms with cheap labor and supplying them with food affected. With the emergence of the plantation sector of the economy, many colonial and formerly dependent countries acquired a monocultural agrarian specialization. Their exports often consist of more than half of the products of one or a few plantation crops, for example, in Ecuador - these are bananas, cocoa, coffee, in Colombia - only coffee, in Ghana - cocoa.
In recent decades, the world market has been saturated with many products of tropical origin. In this regard, producing countries are forced to impose restrictions on their production and seek to expand the sectoral structure of their Agriculture and composition of exports.
The geography of the plantation economy was affected by the general orientation towards the concentration of industrial crops in the most advantageous geo-ecological situation, which, by virtue of their mass distribution, cereals cannot count on. Agricultural plants of both these groups are most often independent of each other from an agronomic standpoint, but the need for their combination is dictated by the objective needs of a particular country, the level of employment of the village, the landscape mosaic of the territory, and many other factors that are far from always closed by the agrarian sphere proper.
CONTENT:

Performed
Student 10 "B" class
MBOU secondary school №43
Korotkov
Daria.

A plantation economy is a large landowning economy in the capitalist countries, in which technical and food crops are grown predominantly of tropical and subtropical agriculture (sugar cane, coffee, cocoa, tea, rice, bananas, pineapples, tobacco, cotton, rubber plants, indigo and many others). It arose in the era of the primitive accumulation of capital in the colonies captured by the European capitalist countries. The first plantations were established by the Spaniards in the early 16th century in the West Indies on the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti). Having established itself on the islands of the Caribbean, the plantation system spread in the 16-18 centuries in Brazil, Mexico, in the southern group of the Atlantic colonies of England in North America, and also in Indonesia (on the island of Java). At this stage, the plantation economy was slave-owning and characterized by predatory methods of exploitation, based on the forced labor of enslaved Indians, and then black slaves brought from Africa, and primitive tools. The development of the plantation economy was accompanied by the rapid growth of the slave trade. Now in a number of developing countries the plantation economy has been preserved.

Tea (India, Sri Lanka, Kenya), rubber (Malaysia, Indonesia), bananas (Ecuador, Colombia and other countries of Latin America), sugarcane (Cuba), coffee (Brazil, Colombia), cocoa (Ghana), oil palm (Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone). Production was located in separate centers in areas most favorable in natural terms for a particular crop and conveniently located for the export of products, although such factors as the possibility of providing the newly created farms with cheap labor and supplying them with food affected. With the emergence of the plantation sector of the economy, many colonial and formerly dependent countries acquired a monocultural agrarian specialization. Their exports often consist of more than half of the products of one or a few plantation crops, for example, in Ecuador - these are bananas, cocoa, coffee, in Colombia - only coffee, in Ghana - cocoa.

In recent decades, the world market has been saturated with many products of tropical origin. In this regard, producing countries are forced to impose restrictions on their production and seek to expand the sectoral structure of their agriculture and the composition of exports.
The geography of the plantation economy was affected by the general orientation towards the concentration of industrial crops in the most advantageous geo-ecological situation, which, by virtue of their mass distribution, cereals cannot count on. Agricultural plants of both these groups are most often independent of each other from an agronomic standpoint, but the need for their combination is dictated by the objective needs of a particular country, the level of employment of the village, the landscape mosaic of the territory, and many other factors that are far from always closed by the agrarian sphere proper.

Sri Lanka. The British colonialists, using the favorable natural conditions of Ceylon and the cheap labor of agricultural workers, turned the island into an "unglazed greenhouse" for the production of export plantation crops.
Modern Sri Lanka is an agrarian country with a developed plantation economy. More than half of the economically active population is employed in agriculture. It creates almost 30% of the gross national product. The share of industry, although its importance in the economy is increasing, accounts for less than 20%. The main part of the gross national product is created in the non-productive sector (trade, services).

Sri Lanka is the kingdom of tea bushes. The tea bush is a heat-loving and moisture-loving plant that needs loose, well-permeable soils for water and air. Tea plantations are located on the western slopes of the Central Highlands at an altitude of 600 to 1800 m above sea level. The higher, the better the quality of the grown tea.

Costa Rica. Coffee and Costa Rica are almost synonymous. In 1808, the first seedlings of coffee trees were brought to Costa Rica from Cuba, and soon this culture became widespread. Coffee became a source of prosperity for the country, and to this day remains an export item. True, it does not withstand competition with large manufacturers, because. on many plantations, there is still only manual harvesting of coffee beans, due to the fact that the plantations are located on mountain slopes.

Classification approaches to modern agriculture of the world. Any attempt to classify agriculture reveals a rich range of types, formed under the influence of a complex combination of natural and socio-economic factors. A particularly variegated picture at the present stage is characteristic of the tropical zone, the village of which is still characterized by diversity, and the consumer orientation of production forces the cultivation of a wide range of crops. In addition, as we approach the equator, the restrictions that the thermal regime imposes on the sectoral structure of agriculture are weakening. Therefore, when viewed from a regional perspective, it clearly shows the greatest diversity in the tropical regions of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Rice. 30. Sectoral structure of agriculture by regions of the world (1980s)

Due to the initial conjugation of the sectoral profile of agriculture with the geographical environment, it has always been differentiated in the territorial context. But agrarian regions, as such, take shape only with the growth of commercial agriculture, following the path of specialization. Such a development of events, taking place on a global scale at different speeds and still far from being completed, actually leads to the transformation of agriculture into an inseparable part of the world economic system. Due to historical circumstances, this process has gone most far and is especially clearly manifested both in the sectoral and spatial perspective in the United States, where agricultural areas, or, as they are called here, belts of cotton, corn, dairy farming, etc., have clearly separated. agricultural regions is determined by the type (types) of enterprises that dominate within it. In fact, this type does not become the only one in the allocated territory, if only because it is not ideally homogeneous in orographic and hydrological respects.

As the interest of agriculture in a more careful consideration of the physical and geographical peculiarities of the area increases, sectoral specialization is more and more clearly revealed at the level of farms and weaker - at the level of vast areas, which begin to break up into small territorial aggregates of agricultural types of enterprises. Thus, the existence of a single US corn belt, which has developed on the basis of the so-called mixed farming with its three-year crop rotation (corn, wheat and forage grasses), has been called into question. Part of the grain was grown for sale, and part went to fattening cattle for the market. In the 70s. the cardinal improvement of agricultural technology, supported by the massive use of mineral fertilizers, stimulated a noticeable expansion of corn crops in the east of the belt. The second main crop was soybean, which already occupied up to a third of the entire harvested area. Since the products of both crops were among the main items of American exports, it turned out to be profitable for farmers to switch to obtaining commercial feed grains, and the production of food breads and meat was relegated to the background. In the west of the belt, on the contrary, the cultivation of corn has decreased, while the spatial mosaic of local agriculture has increased. This entails the gradual falling away of this territory from the corn belt and the loss of its single clearly defined specialization. The process of destroying the integrity of the famous cotton belt also proceeds in a similar way.

The noted process of shifting the center of gravity of specialization to the grassroots level is accelerated in industrialized countries by the appearance in a growing number of agricultural enterprises, for one reason or another, little dependent in their location on the natural environment. Broiler farms are a prime example. In France they find, in particular, a gravitation towards Brittany, with its surplus and cheap labour. This localization factor is very banal, but its deep roots are by no means standard: in Brittany, where Catholicism still enjoys authority, village traditions are strong and the birth rate of the population is quite high, young people, as before, are less willing to leave their native places than in other depressive regions. regions of the country.

Thus, there is reason to believe that agriculture, which in some regions of the world is just entering the path of district formation, in others is already growing into a new stage, not yet known by scientists. It is characteristic for it that the former specialized areas with a clearly expressed specialization over large areas begin to become smaller and break up into separate, often very randomly located clumps of different types of farms. Whether this trend will become general is not clear, but it is already indisputable that rural production in its location does not act as an inflexible passive system. Moreover, the work of the bulk of agricultural enterprises on the market gives production additional dynamism, and the fixed assets accumulated by them appear, on the contrary, as conservative elements.

Since agriculture by no means represents in its localization only a mechanical set of its constituent branches, it is very important to understand the patterns of its geography in a typological aspect. Meanwhile, the placement of even one culture on present stage looks like a very difficult task, especially if you have to work for the world market with its ruthless competition. It is necessary to take into account the impact of an increasing number of various factors that manifest themselves at different territorial levels. It is even more difficult to solve those theoretical and practical problems that arise when agricultural production appears in a typological guise. Given that there are approximately 200 million agricultural enterprises in the world, their study on a small scale must inevitably rely primarily on the deductive method. Such an approach "from above" focuses on a qualitative study of phenomena, based primarily on the analysis of two directions of the village's links: with the natural environment and with socio-economic structures. The inevitable lack of reliance on firm quantitative criteria at the same time gives rise to a certain subjectivity in the isolation of types and the implementation of specific regionalization. "Type of agriculture" is increasingly interpreted in modern agrogeography as the most general and all-encompassing concept. It synthesizes all the essential features of a given agriculture and "absorbs" all other classification categories of this kind, such as forms (systems) of agriculture, crop and livestock systems, types farms etc. This concept is applicable to all established methods of growing crops and breeding livestock and can be used at different levels of the taxonomic ladder.

Below are characterized the types identified on the basis of the sectoral orientation of production and the characteristics of nature management and determined the agrarian face of our planet.

Types of grain farming. Grain production in one form or another is present almost everywhere where agriculture is carried out. This is not surprising, given that cereals dominate the food balance of an overwhelming number of countries, together occupying about half of all cultivated areas. It is precisely because of the rich set of domesticated cereals and their comparative ecological unpretentiousness that field farming is justified in areas with unfavorable agro-natural conditions. A number of crops are distinguished by multi-purpose use, although one main direction of their production is usually traced in the regional context. Thus, barley is grown in Finland primarily for feed, in brewing areas, for example, in the Czech Republic, it is focused on meeting the needs of this industry, and in the highlands, in particular in the Afghan Hindu Kush, where other breads no longer ripen, it becomes an important food product.

In a global aspect, the universality of the cultivation of grain crops serves as a kind of background for the few territories that have specialized in the production of grain on a large scale. It is indicative that more than a hundred states act as its net importers in the world, and less than 20 are its exporters. Among the latter, countries with good land availability per capita prevail. This factor explains almost 1/2 of the variation in the grain balance, which is far from indisputable: Russia and Japan are among the leading importers of both wheat and feed grains, although they differ radically in terms of the amount of agricultural land per inhabitant.

About 180 million tons of grain, or about 10% of the total harvest, enters the international trade channels annually. The main turnover falls on wheat, the export of which (including flour in equivalent terms) approaches 100 million tons per year with an average production volume in the 90s. about 550 million tons. The situation is different with rice, which is not inferior to wheat in terms of annual production, which exceeds 500 million tons. However, less than 5% of the world harvest is sent for export, and interstate flows are limited mainly to the markets of Asian countries. As a result, the second place among grains in world trade is confidently occupied by corn, the most important of other grains, the total yield of which is about 800 million tons.

The general trend in the development of grain production in the XX century. is as follows. Until the Second World War, the products of the industry were supplied to the international market, as a rule, by countries that were by no means economically advanced, and the industrial powers were the main importers. At present, a different picture has developed: powerful flows of grain flow from the "North" to the agrarian "South". Even Great Britain, which seemed to be doomed to depend on external sources of food supply, managed to enter the top ten exporters of bread. Their net annual export from the country already in the mid-80s. exceeded 3 million tons - and despite the fact that only 0.12 hectares of cultivated land per capita.

From a geographical point of view, the process gave rise to another extraordinary phenomenon. Contrary to the fundamental regularity in the distribution of grain crops, which is expressed in their attraction to those natural landscapes where products can be obtained without high costs for fertilizer, melioration and cultivation of the soil, grain agriculture in Western Europe is resolutely moving along the path of further intensification. However, in order to justify the investment of labor and capital, it is necessary to obtain stable yields of the order of 60 c/ha and even higher, which is at least 3-4 times higher than in the long-established main areas of wheat specialization.

Wheat, represented by spring and winter varieties that are diverse in their ecological and consumer properties, can be cultivated in a wide agro-natural spectrum. In practice, among food grains, it does not meet any worthy competitors in the temperate zone, excluding its northern regions, where more early-ripening and frost-resistant plants - rye and barley - come to the fore. But wheat does not withstand the high temperatures inherent in the regions lying between the two tropics. There, it yields the leading position to sorghum and various millet, if we are talking about especially arid territories, primarily in Africa, or rice in regions of abundant seasonal rainfall, or corn, which remains the leading food crop in many Latin American countries. If we ignore the mountain systems, then south of the Northern Tropic, wheat managed to noticeably move towards the equator only on the Hindustan peninsula due to crops in the moderately warm and dry winter season.

Since the achievement of self-sufficiency in food has always been considered a paramount task in most countries, many centers of commercial wheat production, widely differing in power, have developed in the world. The main ones are confined almost exclusively to regions of a moderately dry climate, which have large land resources and are characterized by a relatively low population density. This type specialized wheat farm It is distinguished by a high degree of mechanization, which penetrated here earlier than in other branches of agricultural production. The mass use of machine technology also made serious demands on orographic conditions, because its use justifies itself primarily in flat and slightly hilly areas.

Ultimately, history ordered that wheat specialization be preserved primarily in areas located in the resettlement countries: the USA (wheat belt), Canada (steppe provinces), Argentina (Pampa), Australia and Kazakhstan (in its northern virgin lands). In these countries, agriculture developed in a "clean" place, not being burdened by the legacy of the former diversified production. Even more significant is the fact that there were excellent opportunities for creating large-scale farms, in which the cost of living labor for obtaining a unit of output was reduced to a minimum. High marketability determines the strong dependence on international trade. Thus, from Canada and Australia, up to 80% or more of wheat products are exported in harvest years.

In all these countries, fees are subject to strong annual fluctuations, which is associated with the very geography of crops. Within the CIS, for example, more than 60% of the areas under wheat are located in zones of insufficient and unstable moisture, and in the arid and dry steppe, the frequency of crop failures exceeds 20%. Under such conditions, the extensive nature of field cultivation is justified, when it is more profitable to increase plowing than to invest in more thorough cultivation of the land. Yield fluctuations and the generally low productivity of the economy are compensated by the cheapness of the resulting grain.

Agronomically, the cultivation of grain is based on similar extensive principles in the arid expanses of North Africa and the Middle East, where wheat, supplemented by barley, clearly prevails in the fields. For the rest, it is easy to detect significant differences that make it possible to distinguish the type small-scale wheat farming: agriculture is carried out by routine methods for consumer purposes, peasant farms are small and are only being drawn into the orbit of mechanization. Moreover, even in some large centers of irrigated agriculture, such as in the Tigris and Euphrates basin in Iraq, the dominance of the shifting system persists, when up to half of the arable land is annually left fallow, and on the sown wedge about 90% of the area was given to grain.

The position of wheat in the whole region was further strengthened with the advent of a fleet of tractors, since the plowing of rainfed land (i.e., non-irrigated lands on which crops are produced based on winter and early spring precipitation brought by cyclones from the Mediterranean Sea) took place, which was previously unbearable for draft cattle. ). As a result, upland field farming, often reduced to wheat monoculture, penetrates in wet years into those areas where, on average, only 200 mm of rain falls per year. In unfavorable years, plowed marginal lands have to be abandoned, and being deprived of natural vegetation, they are unable to withstand erosion and other destructive natural processes. Thus, the mistakes of the past, made in the steppes of the temperate zone, are repeated, when, for the sake of achieving short-term success, the agro-natural potential of the territory is threatened.

At the same time, in North Africa and the Middle East, it is clearly seen that the cultivation of wheat and other few crops on arable land does not exhaust all aspects of the agricultural activity of local peasants. Crop farming is supplemented by fruit plantations, and another subsidiary line of production is livestock breeding, mainly sheep and goats, whose grazing has caused serious damage to forests.

Specialized wheat farming is also forced to avoid excessive one-sidedness. This is partly due to the fact that demand and, consequently, the price of grain are subject to market fluctuations, and partly due to the economic feasibility of the complete disposal of field waste and the ability to use fallows and uncultivated land for keeping livestock. Therefore, the ratio of different industries can vary significantly.

A similar change in the proportions of crops in the grain production system led to the emergence within the Pampa specialized corn farm(in the area northwest of Buenos Aires), which was a rare example of the mass cultivation of corn for foreign markets. Argentina remained its leading supplier to international markets for a long time, showing no tendency to develop North American-style pig production based on this culture. Later, due to the corn belt, the United States took the lead, accounting for up to 40% of the world corn harvest, which exceeds 450 million tons per year, and more than 70% of its world exports.

The second and third places on the planet in terms of harvesting corn are occupied, respectively, by such diverse countries as China and Brazil, where this highly productive row crop is grown mainly for food needs, but does not form large centers of specialized production. The same applies to many African states - Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, etc., where it has successfully spread due to the skills of the population in hoe farming. In Europe, the industry is developing solely in order to strengthen the forage base, which, for example, in Hungary, which has created a powerful meat-based animal husbandry for export, is already overwhelmingly based on corn. In a few European countries, such as Romania and Moldova, food from corn is traditionally used.

Stand apart among the leading areas of grain production are those dominated by rice farm. Rice is ideal for lowland areas, which, in the seasonally humid climate of Monsoon Asia, are subject to severe river floods and are therefore fertilized with silt every year. It is jellied rice that provides the most stable harvest of food products at low costs for fertilizer and short periods of field rest. The specific environment of the "aquarium" on rice paddies contributes to maintaining soil fertility due to the development of biological processes in the aquatic environment, leading to nitrogen fixation. As a result, heavily exploited rice lands withstand the ever-increasing anthropogenic pressure, showing no obvious signs of degradation and justifying, albeit with diminishing returns, all new labor inputs.

On the basis of rice growing, the largest clusters of the peasant population in the tropics were formed, confined to the coastal lowlands (first of all, this concerns the island of Java in Indonesia, coastal regions in South Asia and southern China). With a narrow sectoral structure of agriculture and a clear focus on one leading crop, rice harvests are in certain correspondence with the population density of the areas of its traditional cultivation. China confidently excels, which accounts for more than 1/3 of world production, although for climatic reasons, crops are limited to the territory south of the Qinling Range and the Huaihe River. India and Indonesia are next. Thailand is the main exporter, Vietnam has begun to move into second place in recent years, while Myanmar, in the past the main supplier of rice to the world market, has lost its former position. Rice is exported in significant amounts from the United States, where it is cultivated on the basis of modern technologies.

In the classical rice-growing regions, where the owner of a 0.5-hectare plot already calls himself a landowner, there has long been an acute shortage of land in the countryside. In such a situation, the bulk of the peasantry is deprived of the resources for the transition to progressive, but at the same time capital-intensive methods of agricultural technology. Mechanization proceeds extremely slowly. Few opportunities remain for the cultivation of other agricultural crops, as well as for the maintenance of livestock. Rice often turns out to be a monoculture, especially since the early maturing dwarf varieties that came with the Green Revolution allow two or even three rice harvests a year. For export purposes, it was possible to successfully introduce, in combination with rice, jute bast crop, which is close to it in terms of requirements for moisture conditions and labor intensity, but it has received a purely local distribution - in the delta region of the Ganges and Brahmaputra (India, Bangladesh).

Many countries of Monsoon Asia have a large herd of large cattle and buffaloes, especially suitable for working in a sticky, wet paddy field. Only in the South Asian subcontinent is concentrated, for example, up to 1/5 of their total world population, estimated at about 1300 million animals. Livestock gives very little milk and, especially, meat products, since they are bred as a draft force (only buffaloes are kept for the sake of milk). The conclusion about the saturation of the rice farm with working livestock cannot be mechanically transferred to South China, where agriculture is based on manual labor and in some classifications it stands out as a special type - bed agriculture.

Other agricultural types of agriculture. The opposite of rice growing in monsoon regions is slash-and-burn agriculture, which is typologically isolated not due to the peculiarities of the sectoral structure, but according to the totality of the main system-forming features. It is distributed mainly in tropical Africa, as well as in Latin America and, to a lesser extent, in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Due to its extensive nature, this type of agriculture requires large areas per person, although it has internal reserves to reduce, if necessary, the duration of the reclamation cycle. Slash-and-burn agriculture is justifiably considered one of the options for the fallow system: after cutting down and burning a forest or shrub massif, the site is used for one to three years, and then abandoned for 20-30 years. In relatively crowded places, the period of land rest is reduced to 6-8 years or even less, although this is associated with the threat of landscape degradation.

This type of farming is especially characteristic of areas of humid equatorial and tropical forests, where the soil quickly loses its fertility during use, and the fight against weeds that vigorously attack the fields is extremely difficult and often unpromising. For a farmer who does all his work with hand tools, it is wiser to clear a new plot than to continue cultivating the old one, the yield on which falls every year. Slash-and-burn agriculture is also widely represented in less humid areas, especially in the savannahs. In the crops, cereals come to the fore (corn - in Latin America, sorghum and other millet - in Africa), while closer to the equator, on undercuts, mainly root and tuber crops are grown: cassava, yama, sweet potato. These crops provide the highest calorie yield per unit area, but their nutritional value is low due to their low protein and vitamin content. Mixed crops are very common, when up to several dozen species of cultivated flora can be found simultaneously on a plot.

Since the cultivation of the land is carried out manually, animal husbandry is cut off from the leading industry and is poorly developed. The maintenance of livestock often has a prestigious meaning, symbolizing, first of all, the wealth of its owner. But hunting and gathering are important, which take a lot of time, and fishing is also on the banks of rivers and lakes. These activities are organically combined with agriculture in a single economic complex and help to more fully use the natural resource potential of the territory.

The type of management under consideration is aimed primarily at meeting the farmers' own needs, but managed to quite successfully join the production of some cash crops. Some of them are cultivated in separate areas, primarily in perennial plantations: cocoa - in Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, coffee - in Togo, Côte d'Ivoire. Certain market crops have been able to be included in the normal slash-and-burn cycle, such as peanuts in Nigeria and Senegal. As a result, the countries of Tropical Africa have become major exporters of a number of agricultural products.

The geography of the plantation economy was affected by the general orientation towards the concentration of industrial crops in the most advantageous geo-ecological situation, which, by virtue of their mass distribution, cereals cannot count on. Agricultural plants of both these groups are most often independent of each other from an agronomic standpoint, but the need for their combination is dictated by the objective needs of a particular country, the level of employment of the village, the landscape mosaic of the territory, and many other factors that are far from always closed by the agrarian sphere proper.

Combinations within mixed farming are very diverse and characteristic of a number of regions of Ukraine and the southern regions of Russia, where sunflower, sugar beet, hemp, and shag were widely cultivated in the last century. They retained their significance in the future, since the USSR did not count on the import of tropical raw materials, the import of which into Western Europe significantly limited its own production a number of industrial crops. They, together with cereals, are still represented in this region, as well as in the southeast of Europe in many areas, but in small areas, largely due to the lack of significant flat spaces characteristic of the East European Plain.

In the countries of consumer and low-commodity peasant farming, fairly balanced proportions can develop between grain and industrial crops. Moreover, the former usually prevail on the field, even if the money income is not formed at their expense. A similar picture is well expressed in many parts of India (regardless of the level of development of irrigation in them), which concentrate large crops: peanuts - in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, sugar cane - in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, cotton - in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Punjab , oil flax and sesame in the Central Indian states, etc.

The same applies to no lesser extent to northeastern China, which, if we exclude pockets of obvious prevalence of wheat, is characterized by diversified agriculture. In the past, it was possible to speak of a certain "Eastern" specificity due to the large sowings of the local millet culture of kaoliang and especially soybeans, the main producer of which in the world was Manchuria, and also due to the narrow orientation of animal husbandry towards fattening pigs. In the context of the continued traditional agricultural production, which is weakly affected by external trends, industrial crops are still “smeared” over the territory. In China, which was not, like the colonies in its time, an arena for the formation of specialized areas of agricultural production under pressure from outside, this is quite clearly manifested.

Such a situation is fraught with weaknesses. The situation with soybeans, which has become the main oilseed plant on the planet's fields with an annual yield of about 100 million tons (with a total oilseed production of about 250 million tons), is indicative. The share of China in its collection fell to about 15%, so that the country ceded its former hegemony to the United States, which quickly managed to perceive this promising, protein-rich and also valuable crop in terms of fodder. The US concentrates over 50% of the world soybean production, and another 1/4 in total is concentrated by Brazil and Argentina, following the US as its main exporters.

Farming specialized in field industrial crops The most representative way is represented in large territories, primarily in the United States, where a trend towards deep regional differentiation of the industry has long been manifested. As a result, powerful centers for the production of cotton, tobacco and peanuts were formed in the American South, where agriculture acquired a one-sided direction. The modern global line in the geography of this agricultural type is expressed in its growing attraction to sources of irrigation. This is natural: the exactingness of cultivated plants to environmental conditions gives rise to sensitivity to fluctuations in its parameters, especially water, which is "removed" by irrigation.

In a number of cases, the distinctive qualities of individual components of natural landscapes, primarily soils, acquire special significance. Professionals believe that there is, perhaps, no single crop, the market price of which would be so dependent on the nature of the soil, as that of tobacco. Even a small change in its properties affects the aroma, color and texture of tobacco, and the most subtle differences in products often affect profits much more than the size of the crop. It was this circumstance that at one time helped the Old South (Virginia, North and South Carolina) plus the state of Kentucky to become the largest tobacco-growing region. It is noteworthy that many of its soils, which are of little use for most other crops, turned out to be excellent for tobacco and made it possible to obtain the famous virgin varieties. This area is still the world's leading exporter of tobacco (of which about 250,000 tons are exported from the US annually), but production is declining. The former leading position has been lost: in 1990, with world production of 7.1 million tons, the share of the United States in it was barely 10%, while China, which is rapidly expanding its crops, exceeded 1/3.

Cotton deserves special attention, since it determines the agricultural profile of many tropical and subtropical areas, primarily those with developed irrigation. Among them, the large centers of agriculture on the Great Plain of China and in the Central Asian states, in the basins of some rivers in Mexico, in the Indus (Pakistan, India) and Nile (Egypt, Sudan) valleys are distinguished by the scale of cotton growing. In the latter case, not even the absolute dimensions of the product are important, but the unsurpassed quality of Egyptian long-staple cotton. In the United States, in recent decades, there has been a partial movement of crops to the dry subtropics of the West, where irrigation is increasingly penetrating, with the surrender of positions by the cotton belt of the South.

Quite often, cotton suppresses and displaces other crops from the fields, as was the case in the Soviet era in many Central Asian oases, where more than 2/3 of the entire sown area was allocated for it. Hence a number of severe environmental and economic consequences, in particular, in connection with the massive spread of a dangerous cotton disease - wilt, high doses of mineral fertilizers to maintain the fertility of land depleted by intensive use, the widespread use of herbicides and defoliants. The rest of the arable land, even with the aspiration to monoculture, has to be given in the interests of crop rotation to fodder plants, which feeds dairy cattle breeding. Such oases are characterized only by those additional industries that can be combined with cotton growing without occupying significant areas: sericulture, fruit growing and viticulture.

After the collapse of the USSR, its leading role in the production of fiber crops passed to China, which, dynamically increasing cotton production, already provides about 1/4 of the world cotton fiber harvest, equal to about 15 million tons.

A separate highly specialized type of agriculture forms horticultural and vegetable farming. Fruit and horticultural crops have always been present in the role of subsidiary plots in household plots, and small clusters of production gravitated towards large cities or especially favorable locations. So, in Russia, onions, root crops, green peas and other vegetables from the muddy lands around Lake Nero (with the center in the city of Rostov the Great) were famous from time immemorial, and enjoyed a good reputation in both capitals for their excellent taste.

As a rule, valuable fruit and vegetable crops are demanding on natural conditions and suffer greatly from the vagaries of nature. Therefore, significant investments are usually needed for the construction of greenhouses, intensive fertilization, irrigation (it is resorted to even in areas with a relatively humid climate), which results in an orientation towards obtaining very high yields. It is also important for each region to use its advantages in terms of product ripening. For example, in France, special vehicles transport vegetables to Paris and other cities from different horticultural centers at a strictly defined time, and the schedule must be kept, because otherwise these markets begin to receive products from other places and prices fall.

On a large scale, and, moreover, for a long time, horticulture of the coastal zone of the Mediterranean has acquired a commercial orientation. Long hot and dry summers promote the ripening of high-quality sugary fruits, and in winter there is enough rainfall for the successful growth of trees and shrubs with a deep root system. Particularly important are citrus fruits, figs, many types of nuts and grapes, as well as olives, the fruits of which serve as a source of olive oil. The significance of the industry for the local population has always been raised by the instability of rainfed crop farming and the dissection of the relief, which prevents the massive plowing of land.

In many countries of the temperate zone in Europe, too, there have been centers of fruit growing, usually of a narrow specialization, for example, in the production of apples from which cider is made, in the French regions of Brittany and Normandy. The areas of viticulture stand apart, the popularity of which is often determined not by the volume of products, but by its quality. Let's call the famous Champagne, the birthplace of sparkling wines, or the city of Cognac in France, or the “wine cellar” of Germany, the land of Rhineland-Palatinate, where wonderful Moselle wines are made. It should be noted that, according to French experts, only Chilean wines are able to compete with the wines of their country, which once again confirms the exceptional importance of local soil and climatic conditions, their local specifics.

Fruit plantations are located in socially and economically different farms, which are by no means equally affected by modernization processes. However, the largest center of world fruit production at the present stage is rather homogeneous in this respect - we are talking about California, which has become a unique agricultural region of the planet. Remoteness from the main centers of consumption in the US Northeast has been overcome with the advent of transcontinental railroads and refrigerated cars, and moisture deficits are overcome, if necessary, through irrigation. While recognizing the outstanding achievements of California breeders and farmers in developing new yielding and otherwise rare varieties and in testing advanced agrotechnical practices and mechanization of work in gardens, I would like to emphasize the geographical side of the issue: the exceptional ability to localize in each of the many sunny valleys of the state the most suitable for in geo-ecological and economic terms, fruit crops and varieties, i.e. use the agro-natural potential of the area with maximum effect.

Hence the extraordinary diversity of cultivated horticultural crops, with a predominance of those that determine the appearance of perennial plantations in the southern parts of the temperate zone and in the subtropics. The scale of production is impressive: for the production of most types of fruits, except for apples and oranges, California ranks first in the country. There are no analogues at the global level either: for example, in terms of grape harvests of raisins, lemons, apricots, almonds, this state surpasses even the main producing countries. Highly specialized horticulture in the United States is designed primarily to satisfy their domestic demand, in contrast to the situation in Western Europe, where states, being small in size, carry on a brisk trade in fruits and vegetables among themselves.

In two cases fruit growing plays a specifically important role. First, in desert oases North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where farming is built around the date palm, a tree of surprisingly multi-purpose use, in addition to obtaining fruits from it. Secondly, in the mountainous regions of the Gindukushya, especially in the northern part of Kashmir, where at an altitude of 2300-3000 m, terraced cultivated lands are almost exclusively occupied by apricot orchards. Dried apricot is the most important food product of the locals, almost the only one that they have enough for the whole year.

Livestock and mixed livestock-plant-growing types of agriculture. At present, in a number of tropical regions, as communications improve, the mountainous territories are beginning to focus on the development of commercial fruit growing (and also potato growing). For this reason, in the Indian Himalayas, the area under apple plantations is growing at an unprecedented pace, counting on the sale of products on the hot plains where the apple tree does not grow. Thus, fruit growing can become the axis of the declining economy of such land-poor regions, which are characterized by the type mixed mountain agriculture. Ideally, it is based on the exploitation of natural resources of different vertical belts and is of a diversified nature. The overall picture is formed to a large extent under the influence of azonal factors. Interrelations and ratios of the main branches are very variable in the regional section, being influenced by local features of the terrain and also experiencing dependence on the structure of altitudinal zonality in each specific mountain system.

It is difficult to feed oneself from the land, despite the desire to use it as much as possible for crops, especially those crops that together can most fully satisfy the food and other needs of the highlanders. An important support is almost always the products obtained from livestock. Its seasonal passages to the upper vegetation belts up to alpine meadows are an integral part of the annual life cycle of the population.

The considered type of agricultural production is the first in which livestock breeding occupies at least a full position along with agriculture. For the starting point in the subsequent analysis, it is advisable to take the grain farming of the steppe zone, since in more arid territories it gives way to the leading position of pastoral cattle breeding, and in more humid areas, the development of livestock industries takes place on fundamentally different, intensive principles.

In the first case, the share of fallows in the cultivated wedge increases, which is necessary in order to guarantee the accumulation of moisture in the soil, and the overall level of arable land decreases. Accordingly, the practice of cultivating cultivated plants recedes into the background. As a result, livestock rely less on field fodder, and their content on natural pastures becomes predominant. Hence the formation of types of clearly expressed extensive economy.

One of them has young historical roots - animal husbandry at the ranch. It arose, much like wheat for export, mainly in resettlement countries where land was a surplus resource relative to other factors of production. Very large farms have become viable, often with an area of several tens of thousands of hectares, and in them only those industries that are characterized by low labor intensity. Such a picture has developed in the arid regions of the New World: in North and South America and Australia, as well as in southern Africa. Livestock on the ranch from the very beginning was firmly connected with the world market (only in the USA did it switch to satisfying domestic demand) and found a reliable niche on it, supplying wool, lamb and cattle meat.

The main difficulty in engaging in extensive farming is to ensure its sustainability, since it is too dependent in the results of its activities on the natural productivity of the land, which, in turn, fluctuates greatly due to the instability of atmospheric humidification conditions. In bad years, the challenge is to avoid overgrazing and overgrazing, while at the same time preventing depletion of livestock. Therefore, the desire to prepare stocks of insurance fodder is understandable. If there are irrigated areas on the ranch, they are diverted to forage crops and seeded grasses, which allows animals to be fattened on the spot. Otherwise, it is more profitable to sell young animals to neighboring agricultural areas for subsequent rearing.

Not without good reason, a separate type of agriculture can be considered pasture animal husbandry, which is not limited to the territorial boundaries of individual land holdings and is associated with the movement of livestock over very long distances. In a number of cases, there is a typological closeness to the ranch economy, for example, in the mountainous West of the USA. In this geographic area, many private herds from farms are licensed for several months of the year on land owned or administered by government agencies, primarily the US Forest Service. The fact that the public land fund includes both winter and summer fodder lands, as well as "intermediate" spaces on which livestock is driven from one pasture to another, makes seasonal migrations a completely justified and widespread phenomenon.

With clearly less stringent regulation "from above", the lands in the deep part of northeastern Brazil are used in a similar way, where drought-resistant and inhospitable to people, thorny woodlands alternate with shrubs and grasses. The local economy is forced to be based almost exclusively on the extensive breeding of cattle, which is freely kept on pasture spaces that virtually belong to no one. In this case, we can talk about a protracted period of pioneering development of an area prone to frequent natural disasters.

The transitional nature of this type of agriculture is confirmed if we refer to it the transhumance of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, which arose on the basis of nomadic and semi-nomadic forms of life of the indigenous population. In essence, when the former nomads were transferred to a settled way of life, it was preserved, relying largely on traditional production methods and using the former directions of herd migration, the centuries-old method of keeping livestock on pastures of different seasons. However, there was a strengthening of the material base of the industry, and the length of cattle drives for the summer in the mountains or on the northern steppe plains was gradually reduced. Animal husbandry itself has become more specialized due to the state incentives for karakul breeding and fine-wool and semi-fine-wool sheep breeding.

In the belt of deserts and semi-deserts of the Old World - from the Atlantic coast of Africa in the west to the Himalayas in the east - nomadic and semi-nomadic economy. The population associated with it, moving with their herds from one pasture to another, is oriented towards forage resources that would otherwise remain out of circulation. Depending on the nature of the land used, various types of livestock are bred: camels, sheep, goats, horses, and, to a lesser extent, cattle. Breeds of unproductive, but unpretentious and hardy animals, capable of withstanding long hauls, are predominantly distributed. The influence of the natural environment affects with great force, and the death rate in the herd during drought, ice and other adverse natural phenomena is very high. However, reliance on free fodder made this extensive type of agricultural production economically viable.

Pasture lands are linked into an economic complex due to diverse migrations, among which there are two leading forms - horizontal and vertical. In the first case, movements are determined by the annual rhythm and the nature of the water supply of the flat territory. The directions of seasonal migrations are closely dependent on the localization of available sources of moisture. Variable from year to year, the spatial "pattern" of precipitation requires flexibility in the choice of horizontal routes, which is clearly seen among the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula. Vertical nomadism is represented by two main types: a) within the same orographic system, when migrations occur from intermountain valleys and depressions to nearby alpine pastures and are sometimes only 20-30 km long; b) from the lowlands to the mountains for a distance of hundreds of kilometers along stable routes tied to passes and passes. This stability of movement created the conditions for establishing strong ties with the peasants of those territories along which migration routes run.

Nomadic pastoral goods occupy a modest place in world trade, although some countries where the industry retains a significant position, such as Afghanistan, are distinguished by the export of livestock products - primarily astrakhan fur, as well as lambskin, wool, goat skins, down, etc.

In general, the nomadic economy is a very important historically and culturally and extremely interesting in evolutionary terms, but a type of agricultural production that is fading before our eyes. The growth of agriculture reduces the area of pastures, already severely depleted by centuries of exploitation, and transport construction deprives the nomads of their side activities associated in the past with caravan trade. In many arid areas, the issue of transferring the nomadic population to a settled way of life is acute.

In fundamentally different, but also extreme conditions on the lands of the tundra and near-tundra sparse forests, the reindeer farm, built in a similar way on the use of seasonal pastures. It is supplemented by hunting and sea crafts, without which, perhaps, it is impossible to do, but it is almost completely divorced from agriculture. Reindeer husbandry developed under the conditions of the isolated existence of the northern peoples and, despite its economic weakness, was still able to fully satisfy all the needs of the small population employed in it; trade relations still remain a secondary matter for reindeer herders.

In territories with a temperate climate, wetter than in areas specialized in wheat, agricultural production has taken the path of increasing labor and material investments, diversifying the sectoral structure and becoming mixed agricultural and livestock intensive economy. In it, both components have a commercial purpose and are interconnected in many ways, which determines the richness of territorial and sectoral combinations and the functioning of agricultural and agro-industrial enterprises of different profiles.

In Russia, the most representative variants of this type are traced primarily in the forest-steppe zone of the East European Plain, although they are not limited to its borders. The defining feature is the high degree of plowing of lands, which led to an undeniable shortage of meadows and pastures, and great tension in the use of cultivated land. The wide presence in the fields, along with wheat and other grains, also demanding on soil fertility and quickly depleting tilled crops, makes it necessary to resort to complex crop rotations. The need for crop rotation is dictated at the same time by the need to provide a variety of fodder for livestock, which is 90% stalled. Partially, the problem is solved due to the presence of by-products of the leading industrial crops - sugar beet and sunflower, the concentration of crops of which until recently was allocated to the USSR, and in its composition Ukraine. Sugar beet is especially valuable in this respect.

It continues to be actively grown in the states located in the Central European zone - in Poland, Germany, France, Great Britain. The cultivation of a number of other industrial plants in them, for example, rapeseed or hemp, became unprofitable due to cheap overseas raw materials and declined sharply. In terms of production, sugar beets, harvested mainly to meet domestic demand, are about 1.8 times inferior to more productive sugar cane, cultivated in low latitudes largely for export purposes (annual production of raw sugar in the world exceeds 110 million tons ).

On the other hand, in the middle zone of Western Europe, an extremely rich and increasingly diverse set of forage crops is presented in the fields, in addition to such grains as corn, barley and oats, including many types of seeded grasses and fodder root crops. The progressive transformation and strengthening of the forage base, which has sharply reduced dependence on imported feed, has created an excellent support for most branches of animal husbandry: breeding beef and dairy cattle, pig breeding, broiler farming, and egg production. There are examples of relatively narrow specialization due to export orientation. Thus, Danish agriculture, counting on the English market, concentrated on obtaining bacon pork, which, by value, makes up about 40% of the country's total livestock products.

As we move north, towards the border of the deciduous forest zone and into the subzone of the southern taiga on the East European Plain, the northern variant of the type under consideration becomes background. In the composition of agricultural land, arable land still prevails, but the share of natural fodder land increases significantly. Commodity grains, among which rye appears, do not lose their significance. but their production in the northern part of the continuous agricultural strip stretching from the Pskov to the Perm region, no longer provided compensation for socially necessary expenses in the USSR. Among industrial crops, two clearly stand out: potatoes, which have a variety of uses - food, fodder and industrial, and fiber flax, which has traditionally been an important export item in Russia.

For areas where the growing season is short and characterized by low temperatures, potatoes are difficult to replace, since in such natural conditions they really do well from crops whose products can count on mass sales. Crops stretch west across the Polish and North German lowlands as far as the Atlantic coast in Brittany. However, if, for example, sugar beet occupies fertile lands in France, then very poor soils are reserved for potatoes, in particular, those developed on ancient crystalline rocks. With a global potato harvest of more than 300 million tons per year, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany (and outside Europe - China) provide the main share of the crop.

Flax dominated as a market product in many western regions of the East European Plain, which are distinguished by good moisture supply. This bast crop needs abundant fertilizer and requires multi-field crop rotations. Considering its even greater labor intensity, a clearly expressed trend towards a reduction in the area occupied by flax becomes clear in the light of the depopulation of the village in the Non-Chernozem zone of Russia and Belarus.

The arable wedge, although it continues to be used in the interests of the commercial branches of crop production, is also called upon to perform another function - to serve as a source of additional feed. Taking into account the production of natural and reclaimed meadows, hayfields and pastures, prerequisites were created for keeping a diverse herd, including dairy and beef cattle, pigs, and fur coat sheep.

Dairy It is confined to temperate regions with relatively small temperature amplitudes, where uniform precipitation throughout the year and a short growing season make it justified to cultivate field crops for green fodder. In such cases, for example, in New England (USA) or in Norway, where the proportion of land suitable for cultivation is small and arable land is fragmented into small plots, it turned out to be expedient to use pastures and hayfields for breeding dairy cattle. For grazing animals, a flat and slightly hilly terrain is preferable, but specialized dairy cattle breeding is also well represented in mountainous areas, such as in Switzerland and Austria. In such cases, the emphasis is especially pronounced on the production of the most transportable types of dairy products: cheeses, powdered milk, canned milk. Most often, but, of course, not completely, and these products are intended for the domestic market.

Due to the combination of natural and economic factors, dairy farming has become widespread in industrialized countries: Great Britain, primarily in its wetter western part, the states of Northern Europe, New Zealand, and the USA (dairy farming belt in the west of the Lake States). Milk production in the world in 1993 amounted to 518 million tons (including cow's milk - 447 million tons), of which 25% fell on the countries of Western Europe, more than 15 - on the states that were part of the USSR, and about 13% - on USA.

Dairy farming is intensive and is dominated by small and medium-sized farms. At the same time, in some countries, for example, Finland or Denmark, climatic conditions force a combination of summer grazing with stall keeping of livestock in winter, in others, for example, Australia and New Zealand, livestock is on pastures all year round. In New Zealand, these lands have been improved to a great extent, so that in the vast majority of counties at least 80% of the cultivated area is occupied by sown pastures. Cultivated grassland has been the key to making this country a prominent exporter of dairy products. Much attention is paid to melioration, fertilization and arrangement of natural fodder lands also in other centers of specialized dairy farming.

By directional selection of herbs, it is possible to increase the palatability of milk and, consequently, oils and cheeses made from it. The success of the industry is also closely related to the creation of highly productive breeds in the process of long-term breeding selection that can provide an adequate return on the consumed feed. In the Netherlands, the annual milk yield of cows of the most common black-and-white breed averages about 5,000 kg of milk with a fat content of 4.35%. In Russia, the Kholmogory, Kostroma and Yaroslavl breeds, named after the respective centers of dairy production, are well known.

In developing countries, the emergence of dairy farming as an independent industry has been slow and, at best, limited to suburban economy. This process takes place on the basis of the stall keeping of livestock, so far mainly in the states of Latin America. On the whole, however, the paucity of the fleet of trucks and the sparseness of the network of good roads in these countries sharply limit the range of transportation of goods produced by the peasants to the cities. Even in centers with more than 1 million inhabitants, vegetables - the main product of suburban farming in the tropics - are delivered mainly from villages located within a radius of up to 50-60 km. The formation of areas of the corresponding agrarian orientation is still under the dictate of the factor of transport costs.

As for industrialized countries, in them modern suburban agricultural production ceases to obey the former rules of location, which were primarily dictated by the cost of transporting products. The progress of transport, the widespread practice of canning and freezing products, and other latest trends are leading to a reduction in agricultural activity in suburban areas, primarily in dairy farming, as well as in a number of other characteristic industries: vegetable growing, pig breeding, and poultry farming. This process is most clearly felt in the United States. Thanks to the advent of, for example, refrigerated trucks, fresh milk is now delivered up to 1,500 km, while for milk in flasks this distance does not exceed 150 km. In the transportation of expensive products (peaches, strawberries, asparagus, flowers), aviation is also increasingly involved in intercontinental transportation, for example, flowers from Kenya. It is indicative that the New York agglomeration, in which approximately 18 million people are concentrated, meets its needs for potatoes and pork by 2%, in vegetables - by 40% at the expense of local farms.

However, this does not mean that traditional industries do not continue to function in the area around large cities and agglomerations. They are represented by: 1) today numerous farms with partial employment of owners, supplying consumers from nearby cities with fresh fruits, berries and vegetables on a modest scale; 2) large agricultural enterprises essentially of an industrial nature - "factories" of milk and eggs, powerful greenhouses and greenhouse facilities, etc.

However, suburban farming in advanced economies remains highly efficient. The close proximity of centers of innovation, coupled with saturation with experimental stations, nurseries and other agricultural institutions, which are pioneers in the mass introduction of scientific achievements and the transfer of agricultural production to industrial rails, has an effect. In areas adjacent to cities, agriculture is more active than in others, it is forced to compete with other industries for labor and for land and financial resources, which makes it necessary to resort to intensive technologies to achieve high productivity and high labor productivity.

Questions

1. What are the trends of specialization in agriculture at the present stage?

2. In what geographical areas are the main centers of grain production?

3. What are the differences in suburban farming between industrialized and developing countries?

4. What types of agriculture should be considered extreme?

1. Using the text and figure 11 of the textbook, determine which countries belong to the cultural and historical region of Latin America.

Traditionally, Latin America includes all of South America, part of the North American mainland, located south of the Rio Grande, including Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

2. Fill in the gaps in the sentences:

A distinctive feature of the geographical position of Latin America is its position between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The Panama Canal is of strategic importance.

Most of the Latin American states are former colonies of Spain and Portugal.

In terms of water resources, Latin America ranks first in the world.

The bowels of Latin America are rich in oil, iron ore, and bauxite.

The largest forest areas in the world are concentrated here, which occupy 50% of the entire territory of the region.

The population of Latin America is more than 470 million people. Here, a 2nd type of population reproduction has developed, which is characterized by its increase.

Indigenous population - numerous Indian peoples.

Creoles are purebred descendants of Spaniards.

mestizos - descendants of marriages of the white population and Indians,

mulattoes - descendants of marriages of the white population and blacks,

sambo - descendants of marriages of Indians and blacks.

3. Read the fragment of § 6 "Economics" in the textbook. Highlight the main features of the economy of Latin America.

The mining industry predominates, but manufacturing and agriculture are actively developing.

5. What are the features that characterize the backwardness of Latin American countries.

These features include: 1. Diversified nature of the economies of developing countries. 2. Low level of development of productive forces, backwardness of industry, agriculture and social infrastructure (with the exception of the countries of the first group). 3. Dependent position in the system of the world economy. The peripheral character of capitalism

6. On the contour map of Latin America, put: a) On the contour map of Latin America, put: a) the state borders of the countries of the region; b) capitals of states; c) boundaries of subregions and their names.

7. Where does the bulk of the population of Latin America live? How do you explain this population distribution in the region? To answer, use the maps of the atlas, having previously determined which ones you will need.

The average population density of Latin America is about 30 people. km/sq. at the same time, the most populated areas of Latin American countries occupy a relatively small part of their area. In Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, the bulk of the population is concentrated in mountainous areas, above 1000 m above sea level. In general, South America is the only continent where the average habitat height is higher than the average height of the territory (644 and 580 m above sea level, respectively). Intermountain basins are usually distinguished by the highest population density, often exceeding 100 people. km/sq. This is due to the more favorable living conditions for people in the climatic conditions of the "temperate land" in comparison with the conditions of the "hot land" on the coasts of the oceans. It was in the plateau and mountainous regions that the main centers of agriculture and the development of mineral raw materials arose here. However, in most countries with an internal type of settlement, the coasts have also been developed to one degree or another.

Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama - Panama Highway. Brazil, Peru - Trans-Amazon Highway. These roads are the only land links between these countries.

10. Using various sources of information, find evidence that one of the countries in Latin America (of your choice) has been successful in its economic development. Try to predict the development of this country in the next decade. Justify the answer.

Brazil is an example of a successful country from Latin America. Brazil has the eighth largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP and the seventh largest in terms of GDP calculated at purchasing power parity. Economic reforms brought the country international recognition. Brazil is in international organizations, as the UN, G20, Mercosur and the Union of South American Nations, and is also one of the BRICS countries. The authority of this country on the world stage is steadily increasing.

11. What explains the increase in the share of industry in the economies of Latin America?

Latin America has all the prerequisites for the development of industry, namely, cheap electricity generated by hydroelectric power plants, it is provided with the necessary minerals and cheap labor.

12. Is the remoteness from other parts of the world a plus or a minus for the development of the Latin American economy? Express your opinions and justify them.

In many ways, the remoteness of Latin America from other parts of the world is a minus, since it makes it difficult to establish partnerships with European countries with developed economies, but on the other hand, remoteness is a plus, making it difficult for the assimilation of European culture, giving the countries of Latin America their unique identity.

13. Using various sources of information, find out what Latin American culture has given the world.

Latin American culture gave the world such architectural monuments as the Nazca geoglyphs, ancient Indian cities, an example of Machu Picchu, the pyramids of Atzeks.

14. Which of the great Latin Americans (artists, writers, musicians, artists, scientists, etc.) do you know? Who did you learn about while gathering information?

Many famous athletes, such as Maradanna, Pele, Leonel Messi, Fabrizio Werdum. Politicians - Hugo Chavez, Augusto Penochet, Simon Bolivar. Writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paulo Coelho.

15. Arrange the largest agglomerations of Latin America in descending order of population:

1) Buenos Aires; 2) Mexico City; 3) Sao Paulo; 4) Rio de Janeiro.

Answer 2.3, 1, 4

16. Match: Country

1) Mexico;

4) Brazil.

Natural resources

A) copper ore; B) oil; b) iron ore; D) bauxite.

Answer 1B, 2A, 3D, 4C.

17. The industrial image of Latin America is determined by:

1) Brazil, Mexico;

2) Colombia, Peru.

18. Match:

1) Brazil;

2) Ecuador;

4) Mexico;

A) sugar cane; B) coffee; B) bananas; D) cotton; D) corn.

Answer 1B, 2C, 3A, 4D, 5D.

19. Plantation agriculture is characterized by:

1) orientation towards the cultivation of consumer crops in small peasant farms;

2) orientation to the world market.

20. Match: Country

2) Bolivia;

3) Brazil;

5) Argentina;

Capital A) Brazilia; B) Lima; B) Santiago; D) La Paz; D) Havana; E) Buenos Aires.

Answer 1B, 2D, 3A, 4C, 5E, 6D.

21. Choose the correct statement:

1. In terms of population, Brazil is not among the top five countries in the world.

2. The Caribbean region is attractive for world tourism.

3. The main livestock region of Brazil is the Amazon.

4. Latin America is a major importer of commodities to the world market.

Tea (India, Sri Lanka, Kenya), rubber (Malaysia, Indonesia), bananas (Ecuador, Colombia and other Latin American countries), sugar cane (Cuba), coffee (Brazil, Colombia), cocoa (Ghana), oil palm (Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone). Production was located in separate centers in areas most favorable in natural terms for a particular crop and conveniently located for exporting products, although factors such as the possibility of providing the newly created farms with cheap labor and supplying them with food affected. With the emergence of the plantation sector of the economy, many colonial and formerly dependent countries acquired a monocultural agrarian specialization. Their exports often consist of more than half of the products of one or a few plantation crops, for example, in Ecuador - these are bananas, cocoa, coffee, in Colombia - only coffee, in Ghana - cocoa.

Plantation countries. Latin America

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