Thursday, 24 December 2009

PRIMARY INDUSTRY OR PRIMARY SECTOR

FARMING OR AGRICULTURE

1) KEY WORDS

Look for the meaning of:

CROPS, CATTLE, SOIL, FARMER, YIELD, HERD, SEEDS, INPUT/OUTPUT



2) THE IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE.

Read this text and make a framework with the main ideas:

“ Agriculture is important for a number of reasons: - Agriculture provides employment. About 45% of the world’s workforce was employed in farming in the mid-1990s; Although the economic importance of agriculture is declining, as measured by contribution to GNP, it is still of considerable significance in many countries. In India it accounts for 30% of GNP, Ethiopia 51%, Ghana 45%, and Tanzania 56%. - Food production continues to rise and yields per hectare have increased. - Trade in agricultural products has increased. - Farmland accounts for about 36% of global land use. About 10% of the world is used for arable agriculture, 26% for permanent pasture, 30% forest, and the rest urban and waste land. - Agriculture provides the basis of many manufacturing and service industries such as food processing, agricultural equipment, agricultural inputs (seeds, fertiliser, etc.) and a variety of services including finance, veterinary, marketing, and transport.”

(Taken from: -->

GARRET NAGLE (2000), Advanced Geography
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, page #342.)




3) CLASSIFICATION OF AGRICULTURE

Join words and definitions




-->4) FARMING TYPES

Join The farming types with the photographs:

1-SHIFTING CULTIVATION,2- WET RICE FARMING
3-MARKET GARDENING,4- EXTENSIVE COMMERCIAL FARMING
5-PLANTATION AGRICULTURE, 6-DRY AND EXTENSIVE AGRICULTURE
7-MODERN MEDITERRANEAN AGRICULTURE

A)


B)

C)
D)


E)
F)



G)

-->
5- Create a power point presentation with these images. Accompany each photo with the characteristics of each farming type, explaining the types of crops that are showing in the photo and the area of the world where we can find them.



6) Find out what are: CAP, BSE, GM FOODS and GREEN REVOLUTION, write a few lines about each topic.



7) Watch this video:

"The Store Wars". Organic food versus Chemicals and GMOs.





TO KNOW MORE VISIT THE BBC GCSE BITESIZE

Thursday, 19 November 2009

The Economy. General concepts

1- JOIN COLUMNS


A)


B)







2- Read a graph




a) Who produces more manufactured goods, MEDCs or LEDCs?

b) And raw materials?

c) What happens to the value of manufactured goods? (increase/decrease price)

d) And with raw materials?

e) Which are the consequences for LEDCs:

- They sell more raw materials and increase their profit

- They buy manufactured goods at high prices and sell raw materials at low prices and then increase their debt.



SUPPLY AND DEMAND CURVE (A little more dificult)






3- Listen a song

I am the one in ten, UB 40






One In Ten lyrics by Ub40


[Chorus:]
I am the one in ten
A number on a list
I am the one in ten
Even though I don`t exist
Nobody Knows me
Even though I`m always there
A statistic, a reminder
Of a world that doesn`t care

My arms enfold the dole queue
Malnutrition dulls my hair
My eyes are black and lifeless
With an underprivileged stare
I`m the beggar on the corner
Will no-one spare a dime?
I`m the child that never learns to read
`Cause no-one spared the time

[Chorus]

I`m the murderer and the victim
The licence with the gun
I`m a sad and bruised old lady
In an ally in a slum
I`m a middle aged businessman
With chronic heart disease
I`m another teenaged suicide
In a street that has no trees

[Chorus]

I`m a starving third world mother
A refugee without a home
I`m a house wife hooked on Valium
I`m a Pensioner alone
I`m a cancer ridden spectre
Covering the earth
I`m another hungry baby
I`m an accident of birth.

[Chorus]

What are they talking about?

Friday, 23 October 2009

INTRODUCTION. HORRIBLE GEOGRAPHY

. RAGING RIVERS

Reading

WILD WEST BY RIVER

The amazing adventures of Lewis and Clark Washington DC, USA, 1803





The two young men summoned to President Thomas Jefferson's office shivered slightly, although the room was warm. They had just been handed the most important mission of their lives - to lead the first ever official expedition across the wild west of America to find a river route to the Pacific Ocean.

Jefferson's idea was to open up these lands for trade and settlement, and to make America richer and more powerful than ever before. There was just one problem. No one had explored these vast lands before. No one knew what dangers lay ahead for them or if they would ever make it back home. It was enough to make anyone shiver. President Jefferson shook their hands and wished them goodbye and good luck. He didn't care what other people said. He was sure that he'd found the right men for the job.
The two men in question were dashing Captain Meriwether Lewis, the President's trusty private secretary, and Lewis's old friend, Lieutenant William Clark. They were young, strong, brave and handsome. They'd need to be all of these things (OK, so good looks weren't that important).

It was going to be a long and rocky road. Lewis and Clark put their heads together and soon they'd hatched a daring plan. They would travel up the Missouri River, as far as they could go, cross the Rocky Mountains, then follow the Columbia River to the Pacific. Simple!
They spent the winter preparing for the expedition. They were not travelling alone. With them went a group of 43 men, mostly soldiers, grandly named the Corps of Discovery. They also took six tonnes of food (when this ran out, they'd have to hunt for more), weapons, medicines, scientific equipment and gifts for the local people.

These were loaded into three sturdy boats - one barge and two canoes. These were crucial. Without good boats, it was sink or swim.
At last, on Monday 14 May, 1804, everything was ready. A single shot was fired to signal the off and the expedition headed out of the town of St Louis on the banks of the Missouri. It would be two and a half years before they would see home again. From St Louis, they followed the mighty Missouri as it wound westward, through rolling green plains where huge herds of buffalo roamed. For five months, they made steady progress. Canoeing upriver, watching the world go by, was really quite pleasant. The only flies in the ointment were the swarms of mosquitoes constantly buzzing around their heads. Very irritating.
In October, they reached the land of the Mandan Indians. They were warmly welcomed, and decided to spend the winter there because the river would soon be covered in ice.
The winter of 1804—1805 was very long, very cold and very boring. On some days, temperatures plummeted to a teeth-chattering low of -40°C. The members of the expedition stayed snug and warm (but bored stiff) inside their log cabins. It was far, far too cold to risk setting foot outside those four walls.
By the following April, they were all glad to be on the move again. There was just one tiny hitch. So far, they'd been able to follow their route on some roughly-drawn charts but from here on the maps ran out. Completely. What lay ahead was utterly unknown territority. Without maps, Lewis and Clark had no idea what they were in for - whether or not they'd be hiking up mountains, wading through rivers or hacking their way through vegetation. There was just no knowing. And they could only hope that they were going in the right direction!
But plucky Lewis and Clark weren't worried. They hired a local Indian guide to help them out - someone who did know the lay of the land - and continued upriver to the Rocky Mountains. Now came the worst part of the journey. Crossing the mountains was a terrible ordeal. Their food ran short and at night the weather turned bitterly cold. All the men could do was grit their chattering teeth and keep plodding grimly on.

Their courage paid off. On the other side of the mountains lay wide open plains ... and the Columbia River. Finally, on 7 November 1805, they sailed down the river to its mouth in the sea. At last, they had reached the Pacific Ocean and theír journey's end.
The following spring, they began their long journey home again, reaching St Louis on 23 September 1806. Lewis and Clark were given a hero's welcome. Everyone was glad to see them, especially as they'd been given up for dead. They'd covered some 7,000 kilometres, most of it by canoe. They'd been growled at by grizzly bears, rattled at by rattlesnakes, and riddled with frostbite, fear and starvation. Lewis had even been shot in the leg by someone who mistook him for a deer! It's true! Despite this, only one man in the team had died, probably from appendicitis. The expedition had been a raging triumph. True, their river route was not very practical. If you weren't a brave explorer, it was much too long and dangerous. (Many Americans did later follow in Lewis and Clark's footsteps, in search of new lands and trade, but they sensibly went overland by wagón.) Geographically, though, it was all a rip-roaring success. Lewis and Clark's expedition journals were crammed full of maps, sketches and notes about the rivers they'd sailed down and the people they'd met. (They kept notes about absolutely everything. That's the sort of thing geographers do.) Places and people that horrible geographers had never seen before.

*Check your comprehension. Read the text and answer these questions:

1. Who had the idea of this adventure? Why?

2. How did Mandan Indians behave with the expedition?

3. Who helped the expedition to continue when the maps failed?

4. When did they finish the journey and come back home?

5. Did they find an easy route, followed afterwards for other people? Why?



*Try to follow with your teacher the river route of Lewis and Clark with Google earth (you need to install it before) or with Google maps. (Maybe you will need the help of a map and the detailed description of the route in wikipedia)



More raging rivers





*Choose one of these raging rivers and make a file like this:


Wednesday, 14 October 2009

INTRODUCTION. HORRIBLE GEOGRAPHY

In this and other entries we can find exercises and texts taken from the excellent serie of books "Horrible Geography", published by Scholastic Children's books and writen and drawn by Anita Ganeri and Mike Philips.

(I hope that the legal owners of the copyright will understand that this blog is only for educational purposes)


. STORMY WEATHER

Are you brave enough to make a forecast? Look at this drawing and try to do it. Find a weather map for tomorrow here





Meteorologists use weather maps to plot the weather and to work out what it's going to happen. Make your forecast and check it, wait a few days and see. And remember that even the experts sometimes get things wrong.


. What on earth is a hurricane?





They're hair-raising hurricanes in the Atlantic, thundering typhoons in the Pacific, savage cyclones in the Indian Ocean, and in Australia they're known as willy-willies. But call them what you like, they all mean exactly the same thing. Furiously spinning superstorms which rage across tropical seas. HURRICANES ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS STORMS ON EARTH! They claim more lives and cause more damage than all other stormy weather put together.


A hurricane begins over the sea. But it's a bit choosy about which sea it picks. It must be nice and warm and humid. Somewhere truly tropical, like the Caribbean Sea. The mixture of warmth and water vapour's vital - it's the violent hurricane's ideal lunch, and it's what makes clouds and rain. By the way, a hurricane sucks up about two BILLION tonnes of moisture a day, then chucks it all back down as rain!






Inside a hurricane


1 Warm sea heats air above it. Warm, moist air rises quickly...

2 ...creating low pressure at the surface. More air sweeps in, then starts spiralling upwards.

3 The Earth's rotation makes the rising air twist round a centre called the eye.

4 Rising air cools, condenses and makes towering thunderclouds and torrential rain.

5 The hurricane spins away. Byeee!


Hurricane winds blow anticlockwise north of the equator and clockwise to the south.







Are there now hurricanes over the Atlantic ocean? Visit the American web-site of the National Hurricane Center


. Make a brief report about hurricane Mitch that devastated Central America in 1998