Von Thunen Model of Agricultural Land Use
Key Topics:1. What do you mean by a model?
2. Assumptions of Von Thunen Model
3. Relevancy of Thunen's Model
4. Lacuna of Von Thunen Model.
Meaning of a Model:
Models are abstractions of reality that help explain the real world. R. J. Chorley & P. Haggett defined the Model as “a simplified structuring of reality which presents supposedly significant features or relationships in a generalized form”.
This view of models recognizes the fact that the world is so complex and diverse that it must be simplified before we can understand it, (and models are built which are selective, structured, simplified approximations of reality, thus enabling its essential properties to be isolated and analyzed). Like experimentation and observation, modeling is simply an activity that enables theories to be tested against the real world and examined critically.
INTRODUCTION:
One of the earliest attempts to explain agricultural land use patterns in economic terms is contained in a model of the agricultural location proposed by J. H. von Thunen(1783 - 1850). The agricultural location theory of von Thunen is a typical ‘normative theory’, but it was based in part upon empirical evidence relating to economic conditions in the early nineteenth century.
His main aim was to show how and why agricultural land use & land values vary with the distance from a market.
ASSUMPTIONS OF THE THEORY
1. An ‘isolated estate’ (no links with the rest of the world) with one city at the center of an agricultural area, which had no counter magnets in its vicinity.
2. The city, upon which all communications converged, is the sole market for the surplus production from the agricultural area, & the agricultural area is the sole supplier to the city.
3. All the farmers receive the same price for a particular crop at any one time.
4. The terrain is completely uniform in respect of relief, soil, climate, and all other physical conditions (an isotropic surface).
5. There are no physical barriers to movement across the plain.
6. All farmers are economic men, who aim to maximize their profits and have full knowledge of the needs of the market.
7. A single form of transport (horse-drawn carts), and transport costs were directly proportional to distance.
{von Thunen’s model examines the location of several crops in relation to the market, the location of crops, according to him, is determined by---
The market prices;
Transport costs; and
The yields per hectare.
In the simplest applications of the model, which have attracted geographers for several decades,}
Transport costs are taken as the only variable (i.e., prices, production costs, and yields per hectare are held constant for each commodity) to determine the crop location.
The transport cost varies with the bulk and the perishability of the product, highest for timber and dairy products & would be produced in the belts nearer the town.
The more distant belts would specialize in products that were less in weight and volume but fetched a higher price in the market as they would afford to bear relatively higher transportation costs.
von Thunen showed that the land varies not with respect to fertility, but with respect to location. Thus in figure-1, the land is assumed to be of uniform fertility and crop yields equal in all areas, but the return on agricultural produce (XY) declines with increasing distance(distance decay) from the city (O) due to the greater cost of transporting crops to the market. In the diagram, the shaded portions of the columns represent the economic rent of A & B if the next distant location is farmed.
The idea may next be extended to two crops, potatoes & wheat. Figure-2 shows the decline in returns over distance for the two crops. Potatoes yield a larger bulk per hectare than wheat and are more costly to transport. The return from potatoes, therefore, shows a steeper decline away from the city market than that of wheat. Under these circumstances, potatoes will tend to be grown between OA and wheat between AB. By rotating the axis OAB through 3600 a concentric zonation of land use will result. Each belt, according to von Thunen, specializes in the production of those agricultural commodities to which it was best suited (figure-3).
Thunen’s model shows 6 concentric zones
Zone 1:
Produces perishable goods like fresh milk and vegetables as nearest to the city. Here fertility of the land is maintained by manuring(sometimes bought from the city).
Zone 2:
Produces heavy/ bulky goods like wood. The presence of a forest belt close to the city deserves comment. It should be remembered that in the early nineteenth-century timber was in strong demand for building and fuel, produced high returns, was both difficult and costly to transport, and therefore represented a logical land-use close to the city under the economic conditions of that time.
Zone 3:
In this zone, the land is intensively cultivated. Rye was an important market product. There was no fallowing and soil fertility was maintained by manuring.
Zone 4:
Farming was less intensive. Farmers used a 7-year crop rotation----- one year of Rye, one year of Barley, one year of Oats, 3 years of pastures, and one year of fallow. The products sent to the market were rye, butter, cheese, and occasionally, live animals to be slaughtered in the city.
Zone 5:
Farmers of this zone followed three field systems. This was a rotation system whereby one-third of the land was used for field crops, another one-third for pastures, and the rest left fallow.
Zone 6:
The zone of livestock production. Rye was also produced but solely for the farm's own consumption. Only animal products (butter, cheese, or live animals) were marketed.
Having assumed the anticipated pattern of land use in his highly idealized and isolated estate, von Thunen then proceeded to use his model as a yardstick, or norm, for studying the causes of deviations from the theoretical pattern and the effect of particular variables. For example, the modified diagram (Figure-3.b) illustrates the distortions produced by the presence of a navigable river and a second urban center.
The Application of von Thunen's Model
Von Thunen's model has been dismissed by various writers as being anachronistic and irrelevant to the contemporary economic situation. However, von Thunen himself reckoned that his findings had no claim to universality, the methods by which they were obtained could be applied generally. Changes in transportation since the early nineteenth century have done most to destroy the symmetry of the land-use systems around central markets. Modern transport and refrigeration now enable city markets to receive perishable goods from a variety of distant suppliers. Nevertheless, "while transport costs continue to form a major part of the total costs of producing and marketing crops, at least some semblance of a concentric zonal system remains" (J. R. Peet).
A neglected aspect of von Thunen's model is that of its scale. M. Chisholm has suggested that the principles may be applied to the land use on a single farm or estate, the land surrounding a village, or to the patterns of agriculture at a national or even continental scale. In other words, the model is applicable at all scales. Chisholm himself quotes several examples of agricultural villages in southern Europe around which the intensity of land use varies inversely with distance from the settlement. Recently, a national-level study in Uruguay interpreted the pattern of agricultural land use in terms of the von Thunen model, while O. Jonasson attempted to apply the basic principles to an understanding of the pattern of farming in Europe.
In India, the villages of the Great Plains show similar patterns. With the consolidation of land holdings in India, the introduction of tubewell irrigation, HYVs have modified crop intensity rings in the Plain. But, still, a case study of village Benhara Tanda in the district of Haridwar of Uttarakhand shows that the intensity of cropping decreases with the increase in distance from the city market, provided the physical environment and living standard of the farmers are the same.
Normative models such as that of von Thunen are particularly limited by two of their basic assumptions.
First, in the context of agricultural location, all operators have complete information about crop yields and prices, and secondly, each operator makes completely rational decisions to maximize returns in the light of that knowledge. In reality, crop yields vary from year to year according to weather conditions, market prices fluctuate according to demand, and neither can be forecast with complete accuracy. Furthermore, farmers differ in their evaluation of the land and their expectation of remuneration for their work and may neither make rational decisions about the choice of crops and livestock nor seek to maximize the return from their land. All of these facts combine to distort the symmetry of von Thunen's circles. In view of these problems, much attention has been directed in recent years to the question of decision-making at the level of the individual farmer.
Bibliography;
1. Majid Hussain; Systematic Agricultural Geography; Rawat publications; 273p - 288p; 2015.
2. R. Knowles & J.Wareing; Rupa publications; Economic and Social Geography; 139p - 142p; 2012.
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3. Www./ various web resources.
