Six main objectives of agricultural geography are as follows:
(i) To examine the spatial distribution of crops, livestock and other agricultural activities. The cropping patterns and crop and livestock combinations vary in space and time. For example, the crop associations of Punjab and Haryana are different from those of Rajasthan, Bihar and West Bengal. The causes of such variations and their systematic explanation are one of the primary objectives of agricultural geographers.
(ii) To ascertain the spatial concentration of agricultural phenomena. There are certain crops which have very high concentration in one area and low or insignificant concentration in other areas. The reasons for such spatial densities are examined by agricultural geographers.
(iii) Crop associations and crop-livestock combinations change in space and time. What was the crop combination in Punjab in the, pre-Green Revolution period has changed in the post- Green Revolution period. In fact, the wheat and rice combination in Punjab and Haryana is a recent development in the crop land use history of these states.
This association is not going to last as many of the farmers and scientists are rightly challenging its sustainability. There is a strong possibility of the farmers to adopt a new combination in the coming decades. The farmers always try to optimize their agricultural returns and adopt new innovations. The temporal change in cropping patterns deserves investigation and explanation.
(iv) The performance of various crops in a country or region is not uniform. There are inter-regional, intra-regional, intra-village and intra-farm variations in the production and productivity of different crops. In other words, some areas perform better than others agriculturally. The reasons why certain areas are lagging behind in agricultural productivity is also a fascinating ground of agricultural geographers.
(v) Apart from the given objectives, the agricultural geographers have to diagnose at the micro level (household and field level) the causes of existing agricultural backwardness, and then to suggest suitable strategies to enhance productivity. This may go a long way in alleviating the marginal and small farmers above the poverty line in a given region.
(vi) In the developed countries and in some pockets of developing countries, agriculture has achieved the status of ‘agribusiness’. In agribusiness agriculture has been considered as an industry in which the ‘law of increasing return’ applies. The geographers should make attempt to identify the impediments which are coming in the way of making this occupation as an agribusiness.
Agricultural geography as a sub-discipline of Human and Economic geography has been shown in Figure 1.1. The geography of human activities is called as ‘economic geography’ which examines the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary activities of man. Man in his primeval stage was a hunter and gatherer and during the Neolithic period he learned the art of cultivation of crops. Thus, agriculture had been the dominant economic activity in the past and it is still the mainstay of over two-third of the world population. The study of agricultural geography is thus of great social relevance among all the branches of human geography.
