The World in Pieces: Solving the Puzzle of Place

  Part IV. Abundance, Extraction, and the Continental Bargain A Resource Is a Relationship North America contains fertile soils, forests, fish, fresh water, coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, metals, and renewable energy potential. These materials become resources only when people have the knowledge, technology, capital, labor, law, and demand to use them. Oil beneath remote rock is not economically equivalent to oil near a pipeline. Wind is more valuable near transmission. Timber becomes a commodity through roads and mills. Farmland gains value through water rights, soil, machinery, markets, and ownership. A mineral deposit on Indigenous land raises questions that a geological map cannot answer. Resource geography is therefore never only about location. It is about access, control, transportation, price, and consequence. Agriculture Is an Industrial Landscape North American agriculture produces enormous quantities of grain, meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and processed food with a ...