Summary of Our Tour

The maps show that agricultural production is often concentrated in particular areas. This reflects the fact that agriculture is becoming increasingly specialized – farmers are tending to specialize in the production of particular products and as a result regions are becoming more specialized in production. We shall examine why this is so when we look at the economics of farm production in lesson 5 and the effect of the economics of transportation in lesson 11.

We can summarize some of the key points that we have made on the basis of our tour of the maps of production of major agricultural commodities in the United States.

Two major factors affect the location of production:

1. The location of resources - Soil quality and the availability of water are critical, but the suitability of these resources for the production of particular commodities also depends on climate.
2. The location of consumers. For some products, particularly those that can be stored after harvest (e.g., wheat) it is not particularly important to be close to consumers. But for other commodities, particularly perishable commodities or those that are likely to be difficult or expensive to transport long distances, producing close to consumers is very important. We have also seen that other factors – tradition, environmental factors and labor costs can also affect the location of some agricultural activities.