Contenido

La teoría de Von Thünen, aunque desarrollada de antemano, resultó ser una herramienta útil para comprender la economía rural y la distribución del trabajo agrícola en diferentes áreas. Sin embargo, como todo modelo, tiene limitaciones que reflejan la complejidad del mundo. A continuación se detallan los pros y los contras de este enfoque.

Shortcomings of von Thünen's theory

Von Thünen's theory is a new model that lays the foundations for analyzing the relationship between economy and space. Its flexibility and adaptability are its strengths that allow it to be used in a variety of situations. However, its nature faces challenges when applied in the real world, which is characterized by disparities in space, infrastructure, and political-administrative factors. However, it remains a useful tool for understanding the rural economy and its relationship with the environment.[2]​.

Under these conditions Von Thünen used the single variable: distance from the farm to the central trading town. If agricultural activity could be concentrated, like industrial production, it would be located near the market and the distance would be an insignificant cost in the price of the product. But since agriculture requires large amounts of surface area for each farm, it is necessary for them to be located at different distances. Therefore, products will be transported from different distances, causing an increase in cost for products further away.

That is, the location rent is: the rent (U) is equal to the return (r) multiplied by the price (p) minus the cost (c), minus the return times the shipping fee (t) and the distance (d).

The formula is a linear or first degree equation, with a dependent variable, income, which depends on the other variable, the cost imposed by distance; The rest of the parameters vary for each type of merchandise but are always constant for the same type of merchandise.

The graphic representation is a descending line that illustrates that with an increase in distances there is a decrease in income:

This means that an increase in income; generated either by the increase in price in the market or by the decrease in the cost of production; causes a distancing from the market, and vice versa.

If what varies is the shipping rate, the distance to the market increases with the decrease in the shipping rate; and decreases with its increase.

Location rent, at any distance from the market, depends on four parameters: performance, price, cost and shipping rates. Depending on the characteristics of the products, a graded harvest system will be created. For example: the price of a kilo of tomatoes is higher than that of a kilo of wheat because tomatoes are more perishable and their handling produces more costs, therefore they will be grown closer. But how far? Tomatoes will be grown as long as the location rent is greater than the location rent of wheat.

The model can be complicated with how many crops we need and will generate a scheme in which land uses are located concentrically around the market, as seen in the graph at the top of the page.

The uses of the interior strips will be more intensive than those of the exterior strips. This allows indoor farms to have more labor and can be smaller. On the contrary, in the outer strips, where the location income is lower, the farms must be larger to obtain similar incomes to those in the interior.

Obviously, in the real world, the proposed isotropic space conditions do not exist, there are differences in the fertility of the land, differences in topography and access to markets due to communication routes (faster or cheaper), and there is usually more than one market in the region. All of this would cause the concentric model to take on an irregular, although basically valid, appearance. Let's think that Von Thünen's model belongs to the beginning of the century, when national markets and modern means of transportation, such as the railway, had not yet been created.

Curiously, the model is more valid in large markets, with the capacity to transport merchandise from very far away, than in small ones. The distribution of economic activities in less developed countries is largely explained by this model; but also in developed countries: this explains the pattern of economic zoning (on a continental scale) within the United States and Canada, and also a good part of the location of economic activities in the Iberian Peninsula.

But in addition, it also explains the uses of land in subsistence agriculture, as well as in industrial agriculture. In the immediate surroundings of the town there were fruit and vegetable gardens, the best watered and fertilized, which were cultivated intensively. Then there were the lands dedicated to legumes and irrigated crops, further away was the dryland cereal, wheat and spelled, beyond that were the pastures and wastelands, and finally the forest, which provided firewood and game. And in the Asian rice field, it organizes the rural landscape into regular rice fields on the flat lands, in contrast to the dry lands, which are located below. Behind them we find the slopes covered with forests. It is on the dry land, which periodically falls fallow, that the cattle graze. Although the integration of livestock farming into agriculture is not very intense. The plots are not very large, between 5 and 10 areas. The largest are farms, followed by rainfed plots and the smallest are intensive rice fields.

Today agricultural uses have a strong industrial behavior. Landless agriculture, greenhouses and especially farms can be located near markets, as if they were industrial plants.

Contenido

La teoría de Von Thünen, aunque desarrollada de antemano, resultó ser una herramienta útil para comprender la economía rural y la distribución del trabajo agrícola en diferentes áreas. Sin embargo, como todo modelo, tiene limitaciones que reflejan la complejidad del mundo. A continuación se detallan los pros y los contras de este enfoque.

Shortcomings of von Thünen's theory

Von Thünen's theory is a new model that lays the foundations for analyzing the relationship between economy and space. Its flexibility and adaptability are its strengths that allow it to be used in a variety of situations. However, its nature faces challenges when applied in the real world, which is characterized by disparities in space, infrastructure, and political-administrative factors. However, it remains a useful tool for understanding the rural economy and its relationship with the environment.[2]​.

Under these conditions Von Thünen used the single variable: distance from the farm to the central trading town. If agricultural activity could be concentrated, like industrial production, it would be located near the market and the distance would be an insignificant cost in the price of the product. But since agriculture requires large amounts of surface area for each farm, it is necessary for them to be located at different distances. Therefore, products will be transported from different distances, causing an increase in cost for products further away.

That is, the location rent is: the rent (U) is equal to the return (r) multiplied by the price (p) minus the cost (c), minus the return times the shipping fee (t) and the distance (d).

The formula is a linear or first degree equation, with a dependent variable, income, which depends on the other variable, the cost imposed by distance; The rest of the parameters vary for each type of merchandise but are always constant for the same type of merchandise.

The graphic representation is a descending line that illustrates that with an increase in distances there is a decrease in income:

This means that an increase in income; generated either by the increase in price in the market or by the decrease in the cost of production; causes a distancing from the market, and vice versa.

If what varies is the shipping rate, the distance to the market increases with the decrease in the shipping rate; and decreases with its increase.

Location rent, at any distance from the market, depends on four parameters: performance, price, cost and shipping rates. Depending on the characteristics of the products, a graded harvest system will be created. For example: the price of a kilo of tomatoes is higher than that of a kilo of wheat because tomatoes are more perishable and their handling produces more costs, therefore they will be grown closer. But how far? Tomatoes will be grown as long as the location rent is greater than the location rent of wheat.

The model can be complicated with how many crops we need and will generate a scheme in which land uses are located concentrically around the market, as seen in the graph at the top of the page.

The uses of the interior strips will be more intensive than those of the exterior strips. This allows indoor farms to have more labor and can be smaller. On the contrary, in the outer strips, where the location income is lower, the farms must be larger to obtain similar incomes to those in the interior.

Obviously, in the real world, the proposed isotropic space conditions do not exist, there are differences in the fertility of the land, differences in topography and access to markets due to communication routes (faster or cheaper), and there is usually more than one market in the region. All of this would cause the concentric model to take on an irregular, although basically valid, appearance. Let's think that Von Thünen's model belongs to the beginning of the century, when national markets and modern means of transportation, such as the railway, had not yet been created.

Curiously, the model is more valid in large markets, with the capacity to transport merchandise from very far away, than in small ones. The distribution of economic activities in less developed countries is largely explained by this model; but also in developed countries: this explains the pattern of economic zoning (on a continental scale) within the United States and Canada, and also a good part of the location of economic activities in the Iberian Peninsula.

But in addition, it also explains the uses of land in subsistence agriculture, as well as in industrial agriculture. In the immediate surroundings of the town there were fruit and vegetable gardens, the best watered and fertilized, which were cultivated intensively. Then there were the lands dedicated to legumes and irrigated crops, further away was the dryland cereal, wheat and spelled, beyond that were the pastures and wastelands, and finally the forest, which provided firewood and game. And in the Asian rice field, it organizes the rural landscape into regular rice fields on the flat lands, in contrast to the dry lands, which are located below. Behind them we find the slopes covered with forests. It is on the dry land, which periodically falls fallow, that the cattle graze. Although the integration of livestock farming into agriculture is not very intense. The plots are not very large, between 5 and 10 areas. The largest are farms, followed by rainfed plots and the smallest are intensive rice fields.

Today agricultural uses have a strong industrial behavior. Landless agriculture, greenhouses and especially farms can be located near markets, as if they were industrial plants.