Subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings.[1] Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices.[1] Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace".[2]: 2
Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically not necessary for survival and may include sugar, iron roofing-sheets, bicycles, used clothing, and so forth. Many have important trade contacts and trade items that they can produce because of their special skills or special access to resources valued in the marketplace.[3]
Subsistence farming today is most common in
History
Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently,[when?] when market-based capitalism became widespread.[4]
Subsistence agriculture largely disappeared in Europe by the beginning of the twentieth century. It began to decrease in North America with the movement of sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s.[2][page needed] In Central and Eastern Europe, semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy after 1990 but declined in significance (or disappeared) in most countries by the accession to the EU in 2004 or 2007.[5]
Contemporary practices
Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of rural Africa,
Areas where subsistence farming is largely practiced today, such as India and other regions in Asia, have seen a recent decline in the practice. This is due to processes such as urbanization, the transformation of land into rural areas, and integration of capitalist forms of farming.[8] In India, the increase in industrialization and decrease in rural agriculture has led to rural unemployment and increased poverty for those in lower caste groups. Those that are able to live and work in urbanized areas are able to increase their income while those that remain in rural areas take large decreases, which is why there was no large decline in poverty. This effectively widens the income gap between lower and higher castes and makes it harder for those in rural areas to move up in caste ranking. This era has marked a time of increased farmer suicides and the "vanishing village".[8]
Adaptation to global warming
Most subsistence agriculture is practiced in
Types of subsistence farming
Shifting agriculture
In this type of farming, a patch of forest land is cleared by a combination of felling (chopping down) and burning, and crops are grown. After two–three years the fertility of the soil begins to decline, the land is abandoned and the farmer moves to clear a fresh piece of land elsewhere in the forest as the process continues.[14] While the land is left fallow the forest regrows in the cleared area and soil fertility and biomass is restored. After a decade or more, the farmer may return to the first piece of land. This form of agriculture is sustainable at low population densities, but higher population loads require more frequent clearing which prevents soil fertility from recovering, opens up more of the forest canopy, and encourages scrub at the expense of large trees, eventually resulting in deforestation and soil erosion.[15] Shifting cultivation is called dredd in India, ladang in Indonesia and jhumming in North East India.
Sedentary farming]In some areas of tropical Africa, at least, such smaller fields may be ones in which crops are grown on raised beds. Thus farmers practicing "slash and burn" agriculture are often much more sophisticated agriculturalists than the term "slash and burn" subsistence farmers suggests.
Nomadic herding
In this type of farming people migrate along with their animals from one place to another in search of fodder for their animals. Generally they rear
Intensive subsistence farming
In intensive subsistence agriculture, the farmer cultivates a small plot of land using simple tools and more labour.[19] Climate with large number of days with sunshine and fertile soils, permits growing of more than one crop annually on the same plot. Farmers use their small land holdings to produce enough for their local consumption, while remaining produce is used for exchange against other goods. It results in much more food being produced per acre compared to other subsistence patterns. In the most intensive situation, farmers may even create terraces along steep hillsides to cultivate rice paddies. Such fields are found in densely populated parts of Asia, such as in the Philippines. They may also intensify by using manure, artificial irrigation and animal waste as fertilizer. Intensive subsistence farming is prevalent in the thickly populated areas of the monsoon regions of south, southwest, and southeast Asia.[19]
Poverty alleviation
Subsistence agriculture can be used as a poverty alleviation strategy, specifically as a safety net for food-price shocks and for food security. Poor countries are limited in fiscal and institutional resources that would allow them to contain rises in domestic prices as well as to manage social assistance programs, which is often because they are using policy tools that are intended for middle- and high-income countries.[20] Low-income countries tend to have populations in which 80% of poor are in rural areas and more than 90% of rural households have access to land, yet a majority of these rural poor have insufficient access to food.[20] Subsistence agriculture can be used in low-income countries as a part of policy responses to a food crisis in the short and medium term, and provide a safety net for the poor in these countries.[20]
Agriculture is more successful over non-agricultural jobs in combating poverty in countries that have a larger population of people without education or that are unskilled.[21] However, there are levels of poverty to be aware of to target agriculture towards the right audience.[22] Agriculture is better at reducing poverty in those that have an income of $1 per day than those that have an income of $2 per day in Africa.[22] People who make less income are more likely to be poorly educated and have fewer opportunities; therefore, they work more labor-intensive jobs, such as agriculture.[22] People who make $2 have more opportunities to work in less labor-intensive jobs in non-agricultural fields.[22]
See also
- Back-to-the-land movement
- Cash crop
- Commercial agriculture
- Extensive agriculture
- Hoe-farming
- Industrial agriculture
- Opium replacement
- Subsistence economy
- Subsistence fishing
- Urban agriculture
- Allotment (gardening)
- Permaculture
- Smallholding
References
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- ^ from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ^ JSTOR 1237543.
- ^ from the original on 2022-07-30. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
- ^ Steffen Abele and Klaus Frohberg (Eds.). "Subsistence Agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe: How to Break the Vicious Circle?" Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Central and Eastern Europe. IAMO, 2003. Archived 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Goran Hyden. Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1980.
- ^ a b c Rapsomanikis, George (2015). "The economic lives of smallholder farmers" (PDF). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. p. 9. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-05-04. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
About two-thirds of the developing world's 3 billion rural people live in about 475 million small farm households, working on land plots smaller than 2 hectares.
- ^ from the original on 2023-07-30. Retrieved 2022-02-14.
- S2CID 16321096.
- PMID 18077400.
- PMID 23914193.
- from the original on 2023-07-30. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
- from the original on 2022-06-16. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
- ^ "Community Forestry: Forestry Note 8". www.fao.org. Archived from the original on 2020-06-01. Retrieved 2020-05-30.
- .
- ^ OCLC 953047010.
- S2CID 154689928.
- OCLC 1010537015.
- ^ PMID 24910504.
- ^ S2CID 13891983.
- ISSN 0305-750X.
- ^ hdl:10419/54152. Archivedfrom the original on 2022-10-18. Retrieved 2022-12-17 – via Science Direct.
Further reading
- Charles Sellers (1991). The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Sir Albert Howard (1943). An Agricultural Testament. Oxford University Press.
- Tony Waters (2010). "Farmer Power: The continuing confrontation between subsistence farmers and development bureaucrats"/
- Marvin P Miracle (May 1968). "Subsistence Agriculture: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts", American Journal of Agricultural Economics, pp. 292–310.