Land Use and Agriculture in your country

1) (5 marks) Describe the land use in your country. What percentage is agriculture? forest? urban?
-Try to find specific examples/maps

These are the percentage shares of total land area for three different types of land use:

 arable land - land cultivated for crops like wheat, maize, and rice that are replanted after each harvest
permanent crops - land cultivated for crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest; includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees, nut trees, and vines, but excludes land under trees grown for wood or timber
other - any land not arable or under permanent crops; includes permanent meadows and pastures, forests and woodlands, built-on areas, roads, barren land, etc.

Arable land: 26.21%      
Permanent crops: 3.94%      
Other: 69.84% (2011)




2) (9 marks) Look at the following three types of Agriculture : Monoculture, Polyculture, Slash and burn. Describe the pros and cons of each. Think about the social economic and environmental impacts.

• Monoculture:
  
  Pros:
  - Cultivation is simpler and more efficient than farming multiple crops in the same area
  - Focus of agricultural resources on only one species during planting, growing and harvesting
  - Producing a single crop best adapted to a particular environment or to a particular market
  
  Cons:
  - More pressure from diseases and pests because they can spread more effectively as it is easy for them to find a host plant
  - Lack of biodiversity of a monoculture makes it less adaptable to changes in the environment, so a single threat can destroy an entire crop
  - Less effective than mixed plant communities when it comes to exploiting all the nutrients available in soil, water, light and fertilizer
  
  
  
• Polyculture:
  
  Pros:
  - Number of pests, weeds, and disease outbreaks reduces because of increased variety of plants
  - Different shapes and sizes of the plant roots make good and full use of the soil and increase the soil fertility
  - More stable and consistent income for the farmers as they don't have to depend on just one type of production
  
  Cons:
  - Becomes difficult for the farmers to control and supervise the activities going on in the farm. They have to take care of the needs of each and every plant
  - Might result in higher investment in specific equipment to cater to the needs to every plant species
  - Will need greater infrastructure to get the work done on a land for polyculture farming
  
  
  
• Slash and burn:
   
  Pros:
  - Extra nutrients added to the soil from burning and spreading the ash
  - Drives away pests with the burning
  - Removes debris
   
  Cons:
  - Deforestation; when practiced by large population and fields are not given time for vegetation to grow back, there is a temporary or permanent loss of forest cover
  - Erosion; when fields are slashed, burned, and cultivated next to each other in rapid succession, roots and temporary water storages are lost
  - Biodiversity loss; could result in the extinction or endangerement of certain animals that lived in a particular area
  
  

3) (10 marks) What type of agriculture is common in your country? What types of crops do they grow? Describe the current state of agriculture in your country. 

Historically, the agriculture sector has been Turkey's largest employer and a major contributor to the country's GDP, although its share of the economy has fallen consistently over several decades.

Farmers have been slow to adopt modern techniques, and much of the potential land and water resources are inefficiently managed.

Monoculture is common as the farmers devote in planting a single crop and produce tons of it such as wheat. 

About 90% of the cultivated area is devoted to cereals. Wheat is the principal crop, accounting for 59% of total grain production in 1999; 18,000,000 tons of wheat were grown in that year, followed by barley with 9,000,000 tons. Turkey also produced 20,000,000 tons of sugar beets and about 3,650,000 tons of grapes. Other agricultural products were grown in lesser but still important quantities in 1999: maize, 2,400,000 tons; sunflower seeds, 860,000 tons; cotton, 802,000 tons; and oranges, 830,000 tons. Turkey usually leads the world in the production and export of hazelnuts (about 580,000 tons produced in 1999) and ranks after Iran and the United States in pistachio nuts (40,000 tons).