Agricultural location theory deals with both the location — allocation process of land uses by farmers, and the spatial organization of agricultural land uses. The major term in its classical versi...

Agricultural location theory 1: basic models

Each of the many assumptions of von Thunen's crop theory may be relaxed separately. Although these exercises demonstrate the flexibility of the theory, few attempts have been made to relax more than one assumption at a time. The theory has been applied widely and internationally at three scales, namely the microscale, mesoscale, and macroscale. The microscale relates to distances from famers' homes to their fields. The mesoscale relates to land uses around single urban centres and to urban pressures on agricultural production at the urban fringe. The macroscale is an attempt to uncover land-use rings at continental and global scales. A major future challenge for the theory is the possible incorporation of Marxist notions.

G. Patrick Gough

Papers

The treatment of comparative advantage in economic geography textbooks