roomthily

staceythinx:

Aerial views of rice fields in Indonesia (Makassar, Sulawesi) from peace-on-earth.org

murketing:

Photographer Gerco de Ruijter’s … satellite views of circular crop irrigation systems in the U.S. southwest.

(via BLDGBLOG: Cropped)

Dryland Farming (Edward Burtynsky) - photos of the Monegros region in northeastern Spain

via Architizer

Dryland Farming (Edward Burtynsky) - photos of the Monegros region in northeastern Spain

via Architizer

azspot:

Lawns vs. crops in the continental U.S.

poptech:

plantedcity:

Infographic: ‘Our Dwindling Food Variety’

From National Geographic:

As we’ve come to depend on a handful of commercial varieties of fruits and vegetables, thousands of heirloom varieties have disappeared. It’s hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the past century, but a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International gave a clue to the scope of the problem. It compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct. More up-to-date studies are needed.

The infographic accompanies the feature article ‘Food Ark’, which looks at efforts to protect and enhance the global food supply. Also included with the article are sections on some amazing ‘Seeds Worth Saving’ and how to ‘Grow Your Own Heirlooms’.

This is precisely why agricultural impresario Cary Fowler (PopTech 2007) collects and  stores seeds of all varieties in an arctic fortress.

top soil loss in Iowa (1850 - 2000), Adair County, Iowa rest area

via Boing Boing

plsj:

Edward Burtynsky - Up On The Farm

“The jagged topography and semiarid climate that make farming an exercise in adaptability in the remote Monegros region of northeastern Spain also make it a painterly abstraction. High concentrations of gypsum in the foothills — an indication that the area was once a seabed — contrast sharply with flatter farmland. The area is planted with what grows despite a scarcity of water: cereal grains like wheat, barley and corn. For several days in June 2010, the photographer Edward Burtynsky says he rented “a pilot, a fuel truck and a helicopter” and, from 2,000 feet up, documented the haphazardly patterned and colored crop fields roughly carved into the spaces between darker rock formations, after the crops were harvested. “You can still see a little bit of the earth and the color of the dried crop,” Burtynsky says. “I think the combination of those two things really created the kind of color palette that I like.”

radial soybean fields east of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

(Crop Tops: Strange Agricultural Landscapes Seen From Space)

via Wired Science

urbancartography:

Infographic: Harvest Seasons of the Pacific Northwest