What would happen? The ecosystem would remain stable because the red-tailed hawk would be replaced by increasing populations of elf owls as apex consumers. Food web is the network of different food chains operate in any ecosystem. A food chains consists of producer and different consumers. Apex predators (top carnivores) are top consumers. In a given image of food web of a desert ecosystem, red-tailed hawks are an apex consumer. If red-tailed hawks are removed from the given food web, the populations of elf owls will increase due to unavailable their predator and elf owls will become apex consumers and the ecosystem would remain stable.
As the agriculture's are used to villages life and have to take care of the larger tracks of the lands and they thus live close by as compared to the semi-permanent horticulturalists.
As horticulture is not a permanent type of occupation and they don't need to bee close to the farms and required less maintenance.
