ABSTRACT
The study of agriculture has interested some of the most able members of our profession. Pioneer works by such men as O. E. Baker, Olaf Jonasson, Clarence F. Jones, Samuel van Valkenburg and Griffith Taylor published in Economic Geography in the inter-war period have been seen as the greatest contribution of that journal to our subject (Buchanan, 1959, p. 6). These studies of the agricultural regions of the world established the broad pattern, and they were followed by numerous empirical papers on agricultural land use analysing the unique causes of patterns within a specific area. According to the most recent overviews of agricultural geography (McCarty, 1954; Buchanan, 1959; Reeds, 1964) we have advanced little in our methods during the forty years since Baker’s paper of 1926. The urgent need for more research is recognized by our famine frightened world, yet in 1964 it could still be said, ‘Agricultural geography has not yet advanced beyond a primitive stage of development simply because many studies have been superficial investigations of extensive areas’ (Reeds, 1964, p. 52). If we are to make the leap forward into maturity we must take a fresh look at our data, concepts and methods.
