• What are some of the major differences in the location patterns of truck farmi

Question

• What are some of the major differences in the location patterns of truck farming, ranching, and cash- grain farming in the United States?
• Where is the Rust Belt located, and why has manufacturing in this part of North America declined so dramatically in the postindustrial era in recent decades?
• What impacts did the U.S. Interstate Highway Act have on the morphology and structure of U.S. cities in the post–1950s era?
• Why has globalization been viewed more negatively by workers living in rural parts of the United States and Canada as compared to residents dents in urban areas in North America?
• What have been some of the major concerns of legislators and others who opposed the approval of NAFTA in the mid-1990s in terms of its potential to negatively impact local communities?
• What are some of the major differences in the location patterns of truck farming, ranching, and cash- grain farming in the United States?
• Where is the Rust Belt located, and why has manufacturing in this part of North America declined so dramatically in the postindustrial era in recent decades?
• What impacts did the U.S. Interstate Highway Act have on the morphology and structure of U.S. cities in the post–1950s era?
• Why has globalization been viewed more negatively by workers living in rural parts of the United States and Canada as compared to residents dents in urban areas in North America?
• What have been some of the major concerns of legislators and others who opposed the approval of NAFTA in the mid-1990s in terms of its potential to negatively impact local communities?
• What are some of the major differences in the location patterns of truck farming, ranching, and cash- grain farming in the United States?
• Where is the Rust Belt located, and why has manufacturing in this part of North America declined so dramatically in the postindustrial era in recent decades?
• What impacts did the U.S. Interstate Highway Act have on the morphology and structure of U.S. cities in the post–1950s era?
• Why has globalization been viewed more negatively by workers living in rural parts of the United States and Canada as compared to residents dents in urban areas in North America?
• What have been some of the major concerns of legislators and others who opposed the approval of NAFTA in the mid-1990s in terms of its potential to negatively impact local communities?

Explanation / Answer

Q( 1 ) LOCATION PATTERN DIFFERENCES

(i) TRUCK FARMING

horticultural practice is done for growing one or more vegetable crops on a large scale for shipment to distant markets. It is usually less intensive and diversified than market gardening . At first this type of farming depended entirely on local or regional markets. As the use of railroads and large-capacity trucks expanded and refrigerated carriers were introduced, truck farms spread to the cheaper lands of the West and South, shipping seasonal crops to relatively distant markets where their cultivation is limited by climate. The major truck-farming areas are in California, Texas, Florida, along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and in the Great Lakes area. Centers for specific crops vary with the season. Among the most important truck crops are tomatoes, lettuce, melons, beets, broccoli, celery, radishes, onions, cabbage, and strawberries.

(II) RANCHING

large farm devoted chiefly to raising and breeding cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. The cattle ranch was introduced from Latin America to Texas and the plains of the United States and Canada. The first ranchers owned cattle, ponies, and camp equipment but no land, grazing their stock on the free public range . When the fencing of land became compulsory, most ranges were broken up into smaller ranches. Cattle and sheep are often shipped from ranches to feed lots in the corn belt for fattening. The term ranch is applied in the W United States also to grain and fruit farms. The dude ranch offers horseback riding and other typically Western outdoor activities for the entertainment of paying guests. Some dude ranches are also  working  ranches, but most are devoted solely to vacationers.

(III) CASH GRAIN FARMING

In USA Major Cash grains includes corn, soybeans and other grains (wheat, oats, barley, sorghum), dry edible beans, peas, and rice.

Corn, Soybeans, Barley, and Oats

The largest US crop in terms of total production is corn, the majority of which is grown in a region known as the “corn belt”. The second largest crop grown in the US is soybeans. As with corn, soybeans are primarily grown in the Midwestern states. The US barley crop is of most interest to Canadian malt barley growers. US barley is grown over a wide area geographically and the US produces about 60 per cent as much barley as Canada. Although the US produces some oats, Canada is the world’s largest oat exporter and supplies about 70% of the oats imported into the US.

Q(2) RUST BELT

The Rust Belt is a colloquial term used to describe the geographic region stretching from New York through the Midwest that was once dominated by steel production and manufacturing. The Rust Belt became an industrial hub due to its proximity to the Great Lakes, canals, and rivers, which allowed companies to gain access to raw materialsand ship out finished products. This region received the name Rust Belt in the late 1970s, after a sharp decline in industrial work left many factories abandoned and desolate, causing increased rust from exposure to the elements. It is also referred to as the Manufacturing Belt and the Factory Belt

The Rust Belt was home to some of America's most prominent industries, such as steel production and automobile manufacturing. Once recognized as the industrial heartland, the region has experienced a sharp downturn in recent years from the increased cost of domestic labor and the capital intensive nature of manufacturing. Blue collarjobs have increasingly moved overseas, forcing local governments to rethink the type of manufacturing businesses that can succeed in the area. While some cities managed to adopt new technologies others still struggle with rising poverty levels and declining populations.

DECLINE OF RUST BELT --

Most research suggests the Rust Belt started to falter in the late 1970s, but the decline may have started in the 1950s when the region's dominant industries faced minimal competition. Powerful labor unions in the automotive and steel manufacturing sectors ensured labor competition stayed to a minimum. As a result, many of the established companies had very little incentive to innovate or expand productivity. This came back to haunt the region when the United States opened trade overseas and shifted manufacturing production to the South.

By the 1980s, the Rust Belt faced competitive pressure domestically and overseas and therefore had to ratchet down wages and prices. Operating in a monopolistic fashion for an extended period of time played an instrumental role in the downfall of the Rust Belt. It shows that competitive pressure in productivity and labor markets are important to incentivize firms to innovate. When these incentives are weak, as in the Rust Belt, it can drive resources to more prosperous regions of the country.

From a policy perspective, addressing the specific needs of the Rust Belt states was a political imperative for both parties during the 2016 election. Many believe the national government can find a solution to help this failing region succeed and prosper again.

Q(3) INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS

On june 29th 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act, the piece of legislation that led to the creation of America’s current highway system.

Governments had talked about building a network of highways stretching across the country as far back as the 1930s, when FDR wondered about making an interstate network part of his New Deal. “The resulting legislation was the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938, which directed the chief of the Bureau of Public Roads... to study the feasibility of a six-route toll network,” writes the Our Documents Initiative. “But with America on the verge of joining the war in Europe, the time for a massive highway program had not arrived.”

Eisenhower was a leader in promoting the interstate system, having seen what could be accomplished by a national system of highways during his career in the military, which took him to Germany. It was one of the biggest public works projects in American history, and it changed the country forever. Here are three key places that happened:

Towns and Cities
“Because of the 1956 law, and the subsequent Highway Act of 1958, the pattern of community development in America was fundamentally altered and was henceforth based on the automobile,” writes the Our Documents project.

America was reorganized around a system of highways that had their own language–for example, odd-numbered interstates run north-south, counting up from west to east.

Small towns that were bypassed by the highways withered and died. “New towns flourished around exits. Fast food and motel franchises replaced small businesses.”

At the same time, the interstates made travel in and out of American cities simpler, speeding the growth of the suburbs.

Shipping Corridors
Driving down many interstate highways, particularly at night, comes with a familiar sight: a cavalcade of eighteen-wheelers pulling food and goods across the country.

The interstate system, along with the shipping container, which was also invented in the 1950s, helped produce this reality.Thanks to the new road network and containers that could easily be moved from ship to train to truck, overseas manufacturers and domestic upstarts were able to get their products to market in the U.S. more quickly than ever before.New distribution networks arose that were vastly more efficient and flexible than the old.

American Culture

We can spin it this wayby making roads more reliable and by making Americans more reliant on them, they took away most of the adventure and romance associated with driving.

America’s love affair with the car, which begun in the very early 1900s, became a marriage of convenience. While earlier in American history, driving was portrayed as an excursion that involved skill and might have some degree of unpredictability, the interstates imposed a system of standardized landscape across the country–same wide roads, same rules, for the most part even the same signs.

The ambivalence people felt about this new system is visible in the protests that sprang up to the interstate.in the 1960s, activists stopped construction on highways in New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, which resulted in several urban interstates becoming roads to nowhere.

But it wasn’t just protest: the interstates changed how American lived, provoking a fierce nostalgia from writers and those who loved pre-interstate American car culture.

John Steinbeck back 1962 justified with his quote "when we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing"

q(4) Globalization Affecting rural north america

Globalization

Has been defined as: “a world system in which powerful, interconnected, stateless corporations nullify national boundaries and incorporate whole societies as cost-effective sites of production”

Globalization is the increasing externalization of the costs of production, in other words, they push the costs of preventing environmental damage, fair wages, worker health care, pensions, etc. onto the workers or society as a whole

Corporate Globalization, itself, does not make any particular distinction between urban and rural areas, however the impact of their activities on rural areas is often much greater because rural areas ---

–are sparsely populated

–are spatially isolated

–lack the range and depth of social and financial resources available to urban areas to deal with problems

–often on the short end of government allocations for social services –are seen as an exploitable resource by transnational corporations.

Economic Impacts

• Corporate market growth takes precedence over everything else

• Government exists only to support the corporate bottom line

• Provision of local services, facilities, and benefits are abandoned by national governments or dumped on poorly funded local governments

Industrialization of agriculture (corporate agriculture) is supplanting family farming, even when family farms “incorporate” and “get bigger” in an attempt to survive.

• Remaining “family farmers” are barely making a living and heavily in debt

• Rural community businesses no longer have a support base (family farms) so they go out of business which contributes to the demise of rural communities

Farm production is for export rather than local consumption—with prices set by global rather than local markets

• Debt creation – farmers are price takers with prices set by global corporations

• Rural poverty becomes endemic poverty being defined by Townsend as the lack of the resources necessary to permit participation in the activities, customs, and diets commonly approved by society

• Restructuring changes in the structure of the local economy (such as decrease in wages, decrease in fulltime work, increase in part-time work, decrease in local tax base) that lead to impoverishing small ranchers & farmers, farm sales, depopulation of rural areas.

Privatization

public welfare activities become the property of the private sector, such as public transportation, health care, social services, education. Supplies of water, gas, and electricity have already been privatized in some areas. National minimum wage rates are replaced

• Employment & unemployment patterns employment patterns change from fullemployment at a living wage toward indentured, child, and slave labor, “flexible” employment, part-time jobs, & increased unemployment

• Commodification & consumption if it can be commodified & sold it will be. This includes “ideals” as well as tangible products, such as the consumption of the “rural ideal” via tourism. The only justification for human life is to consume the products of the global economy. Nothing has value outside of its consumption value. Political Impacts

• Nation states exist to protect the property & profits of the corporations, not the health & rights of individuals. In the U.S. corporate rights prevail over individual rights.

• Elimination or severe curtailment of government sponsored programs, such as extension, that promote the well-being of all citizens. Social Impacts Rural communities are experiencing:

• Decreased access to quality education

• Decreased access to quality health care

• Stagnant or moribund social institutions— churches, clubs, social centers..

• Destabilizing forms of in & out migration Environmental Impacts

Gendered impacts

• Feminization of poverty as women’s work is dis valued and rendered invisible

• Increase in women performing low-wage or non wage work

• Increase in the numbers of women in “sweatshop” work

• Resources and knowledge for food and survival that have traditionally been under women’s control or local community con

Cultural Impacts

• Local, diverse cultures are replaced by mass culture

• Individual’s only acceptable role is that of consumer

• A “way of life” which is a deeply ingrained pattern of living where individuals fulfill multiple diverse roles has been replaced by “lifestyles” that are purchased and easily discarded as each “lifestyle” fad is marketed to docile consumers.

Now let's talk about united states ---

The traditional rural economy is fueled by commodities. Agricultural commodity production is the tradition cornerstone of most rural communities. Others have been based on the ability to extract minerals and other natural resource commodities. Many rural manufacturers are focused on the production of industrial commodities.

Success in a commodity industry is defined by a single mantra: be the low-cost producer. Increased efficiency and productivity are the economic drivers in a commodity environment. The result has been a consolidating economic map. In agriculture, the necessity to become the low-cost producer has led the drive for economies of scale among farm operations. Over time, farm sizes have become larger while the number of farmers has shrunk.

Competing in commodity based industries was a successful strategy when rural America was competing against its metro counterparts. Rural places have a competitive advantage over metropolitan places when it comes to low-cost production. Rural America is characterized by comparatively abundant natural resources, low-cost land, and low-cost labor. These characteristics are essential in commodity industries where success is defined by being the low-cost producer.

In a global economy, rural America does not necessarily have these competitive advantages. Third-world countries are striving to economic advancement by implementing development strategies based on the availability of undeveloped natural resources and low-cost land and labor. The result has been a decline in rural America's commodity industries. In agriculture, the U.S. accounts for less than 40 percent of world soybean production down from 50 percent in the 1980s. In 2002, U.S. soybean production fell below the combined production of Brazil and Argentina. The U.S. share of world wheat trade has fallen from roughly 42 percent in the 1970s to roughly 20 percent today. Outside of agriculture, many rural factories are closing their doors and moving their operations to other countries. The effect has been a sharp rise in rural mass layoffs due to factory closures. Since 2001, roughly 40 percent of rural mass layoffs were due to factory closures.

Conclusion

Globalization presents new challenges to the rural economy. The challenges are especially intense for commodity industries that are no longer the lowest cost producers. Rural America needs new sources of competitive advantage that emerge from demand-driven technologies that produce new products developed by entrepreneurs. Seizing these opportunities may require rural America to blaze a new trial of partnership, regional competitiveness and equity capital in the 21st century.

Q(5) Negetive impact of NAFTA

NAFTA has received a lot of criticism for taking U.S. jobs. While it has also done good things for the economy, the North American Free Trade Agreement has six weaknesses. These disadvantages had a negative impact on both American and Mexican workers and even the environment.

There were six major concerens

.

1. U.S. jobs Were Lost

Since labor is cheaper in Mexico, many manufacturing industries withdrew part of their production from the high-cost United States. Between 1994 and 2010, the U.S. trade deficits with Mexico totaled $97.2 billion. In the same period, 682,900 U.S. jobs went to Mexico. But 116,400 of those jobs were displaced after 2007. The 2008 financial crisis could have caused them instead of NAFTA.

Almost 80 percent of the losses were in manufacturing. The hardest-hit states were California, New York, Michigan, and Texas. They had high concentrations of the industries that moved plants to Mexico. These industries included motor vehicles, textiles, computers, and electrical appliances.

2. U.S. Wages Were Suppressed

Not all companies in these industries moved to Mexico. But some used the threat of moving as leverage against union organizing drives. When workers had to choose between joining the union or losing the factory, workers chose the plant. Without union support, the workers had little bargaining power. That suppressed wage growth. Between 1993 and 1995, 50 percent of U.S. manufacturing companies in industries that were moving to Mexico used the threat of closing the factory. By 1999, that rate grew to 65 percent.

3. Mexico's Farmers Were Put Out of Business

Thanks to NAFTA, Mexico lost 1.3 million farm jobs. The 2002 Farm Bill subsidized U.S. agribusiness by as much as 40 percent of net farm income. When NAFTA removed trade tariffs, companies exported corn and other grains to Mexico below cost. Rural Mexican farmers could not compete. At the same time, Mexico reduced its subsidies to farmers from 33.2 percent of total farm income in 1990 to 13.2 percent in 2001. Most of those subsidies went to Mexico's large farms. These changes meant many small Mexican farmers were put out of business by highly subsidized American farmers.

4. Maquiladora Workers Were Exploited

NAFTA expanded the maquiladora program by removing tariffs. Maquiladora is where United States-owned companies employ Mexican workers near the border. They cheaply assemble products for export back into the United States. The program grew to employ 30 percent of Mexico's labor force. The workers had "no labor rights or health protections," according to Continental Social Alliance. In addition, the "workdays stretch out 12 hours or more, and if you are a woman, you could be forced to take a pregnancy test when applying for a job."

5. Mexico's Environment Deteriorated

In response to NAFTA’s competitive pressure, Mexico agribusiness used more fertilizers and other chemicals, costing $36 billion per year in pollution. Rural farmers expanded into marginal land, resulting in deforestation at a rate of 630,000 hectares per year.

6. NAFTA Called for Free U.S. Access for Mexican Trucks

Another agreement within NAFTA was never implemented. NAFTA would have allowed trucks from Mexico to travel within the United States beyond the current 20-mile commercial zone limit. A demonstration project by the Department of Transportation was set up to review the practicality of this. In 2008, the House of Representatives terminated this project. It prohibited the DOT from implementing it without Congressional approval.

Congress worried that Mexican trucks would have presented a road hazard. They are not subject to the same safety standards as U.S. trucks. U.S. truckers' organizations and companies opposed it because they would have lost business. Currently, Mexican trucks must stop at the 20-mile limit and have their goods transferred to U.S. trucks.

There was also a question of reciprocity. The NAFTA agreement would have allowed unlimited access for U.S. vehicles throughout Mexico. A similar arrangement works well between the other NAFTA partner, Canada. But U.S. trucks are larger and carry heavier loads. They violate size and weight restrictions imposed by the Mexican government.

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