Farming in Land Planning: An Exploratory Survey

Bruce K. Ferguson

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DOI: 10.2190/EX21-EE2L-00AV-40H9

Abstract

Land planning must take account of the functional relationships between land use components, the ways these components aggregate into land use types, and the relationships between aggregates and their sites. Farming is a land use, defined as the relatively intense terrestrial production of plant crops. This paper synthesizes available literature to provide a systemic model of farming that can apply to many technological and site contexts of land planning. The selection of plants to be grown determines the planting, pollination (in some cases), and harvesting practices that control the plants' productive cycle, and all the practices that influence the plants' environment. The environment consists of mechanical support, water, air, nutrients, heat, light, competition, disease, predation and continuation of the above over time. Any combination of farming practices would constitute a farming system of some sort. The compositions and intensities of farming systems have important implications for land planning.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.