How Food Production has Impacted the Thar Desert
Food production has had both positive and negative effects on the Thar Desert. A big part of the parts of the Thar desert where people live is farming. Most of the farming done in the Thar desert is subsistence which means that the crops that are produced are to sustain the farmer's family. If they have extra crops after feeding their family, only then it will go to a market so the person can make extra money. The India Gandhi canal have allowed for the irrigation of 3500k㎡ of land for the commercial production of wheat, cotton and maize (we find in a case study by internet geography. Scroll down to look at it!). This means that 3500k㎡ of the Thar desert's land is fertile and allows different forms of organisms to live there. So, in this case, food production has made the land more liveable for different types of plants and animals, making a more biodiverse space. However, the population on the Thar desert is around 16.6 million people and rising. As more and more people live in the Thar Desert each year, more food needs to be produced and more land needs to be used for food production. Because of this, the desert becomes less of a home to different animals and plants, and more of an area for farming. The rising amount of food production needed also takes away the natural atheistic value of the biome and the natural aspect of the desert and instead, it slowly becomes just a place to live and grow food, rather than one of the many beauties of the world.
Fun Fact: Unlike most large deserts in the world, the Thar holds up to 40 different species of mammals and over 120 different species of different organisms. This makes the it one of the most biodiverse deserts in the world!
Case Studies
PQE
P: All of the Jowar (Sorghum) that is grown in India is located in the middle of the country. Q: Rajasthan, which is to the west of India, is home to the largest area of sparce vegetation, most likely due to it being home to the Thar desert. E: Despite being mainly located at the north end of India, one of the areas with two predominate crops in India is found separate to the other large areas and to the west of the centre of the country.
Image one
Image two
PQE
P: On one side of India around the edges of the country, the least amount of people are vegetarian. Q: The outskirts of the country, from the east side to the south side, between 1.3% to 2.6% of people are vegetarian. E: In the centre of the east most side of India, the amount of people that are vegetarian is much higher than every place around it.
DQE
D: These two maps have a strong degree of relation as the image one shows the type of foods that are grown throughout India and based on what you can eat and what foods you have available, decides how you can eat which is shown in image two. Q: In Rajasthan where the Thar desert it located, map one tell us that there is very little vegetation around and because of what little the Thari people have access to, most of them will have to live off only crops which they have made, and that is shown in image two because in Rajasthan, 75% of people there are vegetarian. E: In image one, Jowar (Soghrum) is located in the centre of India and it is all together, however, in image two, the centre of India has a wide variety of people who are vegetarian and it is not consistent with image one because the percentage of vegetarians spreads between 11% to 51%!
