NCERT Class 12 Geography Part 1 Chapter 6: Secondary Activities YouTube Lecture Handouts

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Secondary Activities

  • Secondary activities add value to natural resources by transforming raw materials into valuable products. Cotton in the boll has limited use but after it is transformed into yarn, becomes more valuable
  • Similarly iron transformed to steel is useful
  • In each of these processes, the common characteristics are the application of power, mass production of identical products and specialised labour in factory settings for the production of standardised commodities

Modern Large Scale Industries

  • Specialization of skills or methods of production โ€“ high cost, production of large quantities
  • transforming raw materials into finished goods of higher value for sale in local or distant markets.
  • Mechanization โ€“ use gadgets, automation
  • Technical Innovation โ€“ R&D, eliminate waste, combat pollution
  • A complex machine technology
  • Extreme specialisation and division of labour for producing more goods with less effort, and low costs
  • Vast capital
  • Large organisations
  • Executive bureaucracy
  • Uneven geographic distribution โ€“ cover 10% area (eco and political power)
  • Industries maximise profits by reducing costs. Therefore, industries should be located at points where the production costs are minimum
  • Access to Market - โ€˜Marketโ€™ means people who have a demand for these goods and also have the purchasing power (ability to purchase) to be able to purchase from the sellers at a place โ€“ dense areas are good markets
  • Access to Raw Material - Industries based on cheap, bulky and weight-losing material (ores) are located close to the sources of raw material such as steel, sugar, and cement industries โ€“ perishability, agro and dairy industry
  • Access to Labor Supply โ€“ mechanization, automation and flexibility
  • Access to Source of Energy - Coal, HEP, Petrol
  • Access to Transport โ€“ West Europe, North America
  • Government Policies โ€“ regional policies and balanced economic development
  • Access to Agglomeration Economies and Link Between Industries
  • Footloose Industries โ€“ not dependent on raw material, not polluting and accessibility is the key
Illustration: Modern Large Scale Industries
  • Based on Size โ€“
  • Cottage โ€“ smallest, household, family members; Goldsmiths make jewellery of gold, silver and bronze
  • Small Scale Manufacturing - local raw material, simple power-driven machines and semi-skilled labour. It provides employment and raises local purchasing power. India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, etc. have developed labour-intensive small scale manufacturing in order to provide employment to their population.
  • Large Scale Manufacturing โ€“ large market, various raw materials, enormous energy, specialised workers, advanced technology, assembly-line mass production and large capital โ€“ UK, NE USA, Europe
  • traditional large-scale industrial regions which are thickly clustered in a few more developed countries.
  • high-technology large scale industrial regions which have diffused to less developed countries
  • Agri-business is commercial farming on an industrial scale often financed by business whose main interests lie outside agriculture, for example, large corporations in tea plantation business.

Traditional Large Scale Industrial Regions

  • Heavy industries near coal fields
  • Higher employment
  • Higher density
  • Unattractive environment
  • Unemployment, emigration, delict land areas
  • Ruhr Coal-field, Germany: This has been one of the major industrial region โ€“ coal and steel - huge Opel car assembly plant, new chemical plants, universities

High Technology Industry

  • High technology, or simply high-tech, is the latest generation of manufacturing activities
  • R&D efforts, robotics, computer aided design, manufacturing, electronic controls
  • Neatly spaced, low, modern, dispersed, office-plant-lab buildings rather than massive assembly structures, factories and storage areas mark the high-tech industrial landscape
  • High-tech industries which are regionally concentrated, self-sustained and highly specialised are called technopolies. The Silicon Valley near San Francisco and Silicon Forest near Seattle are examples of technopolies

Iron and Steel Industry

  • Basic Industry
  • Provides raw material
  • Iron is extracted from iron ore by smelting in a blast furnace with carbon (coke) and limestone. The molten iron is cooled and moulded to form pig iron which is used for converting into steel by adding strengthening materials like manganese.
  • traditionally located close to the sources of raw materials โ€“ iron ore, coal, manganese and limestone โ€“ or at places where these could be easily brought, e. g. near ports
  • In U. S. A, most of the production comes from the north Appalachian region (Pittsburgh) , Great Lake region (Chicago-Gary, Erie, Cleveland, Lorain, Buffalo and Duluth) and the Atlantic Coast (Sparrows Point and Morisville) . The industry has also moved towards the southern state of Alabama. Pittsburg area is now losing ground. It has now become the โ€œrust bowlโ€ of U. S. A.
  • In Europe, U. K. , Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourgh, the Netherlands and Russia are the leading producers. The important steel centres are Birmingham and Sheffield in the U. K. ; Duisburg, Dortmund, Dusseldorf and Essen in Germany; Le Creusot and St. Ettienne in France; and Moscow, . Petersburgh, Lipetsk, Tula, in Russia and Krivoi Rog, and Donetsk in Ukraine.
  • In Asia, the important centres include Nagasaki and Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan; Shanghai, Tienstin and Wuhan in China; and Jamshedpur, Kulti- Burnpur, Durgapur, Rourkela, Bhilai, Bokaro, Salem, Visakhapatnam and Bhadravati in India

Cotton Textile Industry

  • Handloom, powerloom and mill sectors.
  • Handloom sector is labour-intensive and provides employment to semi-skilled workers.
  • It requires small capital investment
  • The powerloom sector introduces machines and becomes less labour intensive and the volume of production increases. Cotton textile mill sector is highly capital intensive and produces fine clothes in bulk
  • Egypt produce more than half of the worldีšs raw cotton. The U. K, NW European countries and Japan also produce cotton textile made from imported yarn. Europe alone accounts for nearly half of the worldีšs cotton imports
  • Germany recorded constant growth in cotton textile industry since Second World War till the seventies but now it has declined. It has shifted to less developed countries where labour costs are low.

โœ Manishika