The Five-Region Harvest Guide

A Harvest Market Across the United States

At the Cedar Lantern Farmers Market, a geography team created a harvest guide for shoppers. A common school map groups the United States into five broad regions: the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. These regions help people compare patterns, but each region contains many different places.

The Northeast has an Atlantic coast, the Appalachian Mountains, wooded areas, and many hills and valleys. It usually has four distinct seasons. Fishing, forests, farms, and fertile valleys provide important resources. The Southeast has Atlantic and Gulf coasts, coastal plains, and parts of the Appalachian Mountains. Its climate is often warm and humid, and its resources include forests, farms, and fish.

The Midwest includes the Great Lakes, central lowlands, and broad plains. Much of the land is fairly level, with hot summers and cold winters. Fertile soil supports crops such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, as well as livestock. The Southwest has deserts, plateaus, and canyons. Its climate is generally dry, so some farmers use water from rivers or underground sources. Cattle, cotton, and energy resources are important there.

The West includes the Pacific coast and several mountain ranges, including the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. It also has valleys and some deserts. Its climates vary from place to place. Forests, Pacific fishing, fertile valleys, orchards, and minerals are among its resources. To compare one part of each region, the team made a graph showing the annual precipitation, or rain and melted snow, in one sample city from each region. The values are rounded to the nearest ten inches.