Food & Climate 

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1. Plants and climate

Worksheet 2: Distribution of Crops

Look again at Basics - 1. Past and present - crops and answer these questions!

Exercise 1:

Print out the worksheet and find an altas. 
Using the climate information in your atlas and the information from the text, mark the major growing areas in North America for:

   - maize/sweetcorn (orange),
   - wheat (red),
   - soya bean (magenta) 
   - cotton (green)

on your map.

Once you have done this, compare your results with the crop maps from the online atlas of the United States:
 http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/NatlasStart.asp

Click on the + of agriculture and select the crop (soybean, cotton, corn, wheat),
then click on "50 states" and here comes your map (1997 data).  Continue with the other crops.

Use the "zoom in" function for more detail, add "streams and waterbodies" and decide if this is helpful or not.
Use the print function (best for a color printer) and make your own selection of maps.

(Our worksheet was made with the Diercke Weltatlas.  The online map will give slightly different results).

1. Map of North America, drawn by Florian Schäfer.

Exercise 2:

Use the information from the text and climate maps of North America from your altas to try and explain why the crops are grown in these locations.

Exercise 3:

Can you think of any other reasons why the crops are grown in these areas?

Exercise 4:

The table in the text shows the effect of high temperatures and soil moisture on the growth of major field crops.

Do you know what these crops look like? Click at the button to see if you are right!

1. Which of these three pictures shows maize (sweetcorn)?

image 2. a-c)

2. Which of these three pictures shows wheat?

image 3. a-c)

3. Which of these three pictures shows soya beans?

4. Which of these three pictures shows cotton?

Photographs: Hemera - Big box of art.

About this page:
author: F. Schäfer - University of Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany
educational reviewer: Prof. Helmut Schrettenbrunner, Dr. Yvonne Schleicher and Julia Heres - University of Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany
last update: 2004-01-07