AP Human Geography — agricultural origins, practices and regions

Unit 5 of AP Human Geography, Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes, asks where farming began, how it spread and why the world's farms look so different from one region to the next. This material covers the origins and practices half of the unit; the Green Revolution, von Thünen's model and rural survey systems are treated in other materials of the category.

The set opens with the hearths of domestication: the Fertile Crescent with wheat, barley, sheep and goats, Mesoamerica with maize, beans and squash, the Andes, East Asia, the Indus Valley and Southeast Asia. You follow crops, animals and diseases across the Atlantic in the Columbian Exchange, and then the Second Agricultural Revolution in Britain: enclosure, the seed drill, four-field rotation and selective breeding, which fed a growing population and released workers for the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

The core of the material is the map of agricultural systems and the reasons behind it. Climate explains Mediterranean agriculture, with its olives, grapes and citrus, and the difficulties of tropical soils. You distinguish subsistence from commercial farming and see why commercial farmers turn to monocropping. You place each system on the world map and in its category: shifting cultivation and pastoral nomadism as extensive systems of forests and drylands, plantations as intensive, export-oriented estates with colonial roots, mixed crop and livestock farming in the US Corn Belt, market gardening close to cities and ranching on the Great Plains and the Pampas, with bid-rent theory tying intensity to land cost. The written work adds how terraces, irrigation, drained wetlands and deforestation reshape landscapes.

Four formats are offered. The quiz has twelve questions built on real regions and short scenarios, each explained. The flashcards cover hearths, the two directions of the Columbian Exchange and every farming system. The written work gives eight free-response style questions to answer by hand, with a reference answer and key points for each. In the oral exam an examiner asks one question at a time, asks you to classify farming systems you have not seen before and to explain them at different scales, and ends with precise feedback.

This is practice material written by Zestly, based on the published AP Human Geography course framework; it is not produced or endorsed by the College Board.

• Identify major hearths of domestication and the crops and animals associated with them
• Explain the Columbian Exchange and the Second Agricultural Revolution and their consequences
• Explain how climate and physical geography shape agricultural practice, including Mediterranean agriculture
• Classify farming systems as subsistence or commercial and as intensive or extensive, using bid-rent theory
• Locate and describe shifting cultivation, pastoral nomadism, plantations, mixed crop and livestock farming, market gardening and ranching
• Explain how agricultural practices such as terraces, irrigation and draining wetlands alter the landscape

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board AP Human Geography Course and Exam Description (course framework effective fall 2020), Unit 5, topics 5.1, 5.3 to 5.6 and 5.10.