Chapter 8 Livelihood and Economy - Primary Activities

1
Chapter 8 Livelihood and Economy - Primary
Activities

• Classification of Economic Activity
• Subsistence Agriculture
• Commercial Agriculture
• Other Primary Activities
• Trade in primary activities
• Economic Geography - study of how people earn
  their living, how livelihood systems vary by
  area, and how economic activities are spatially
  interrelated and linked

2
Classification of Economic Activities Economics

• Factors -
• Physical environment and cultural considerations
• Exploit resources dependent upon technology
• Political decisions
• economic factors of demand
• Categories of Activity

Quinary Activities Executive Decision Maker
Quaternary Activities Info/Research/Management
Tertiary Activities Retail Wholesale/Personal
Prof. services
Transportation Comm.
Secondary Activities Manufacturing/Processing/Cons
truction/Power Production
Primary Activities Agriculture/Gathering/Extractiv
e Industries
3
Types of Economic systems
Subsistence Economy goods/services for the use of
producers/family

• very few people are members of only one type of
  economic system

Commercial Economy producers market
goods/services, supply-demand/competition
Planned Economy government controlled/decided
prices

• Systems subject to change - market/globalization
• Transportation is a key variable
• Isolation restrict the access to outside world
  (fig 8.4)

4
Primary Activities Agriculture

• Def. growing crops and tending livestock, for
  sale or subsistence. (8.5 - growing season)
• 10 of the total earth land is for crop farming.
• Declining trend in agriculture employment in
  developing countries (8.6)
• Developed - 8 in most of W. Europe, lt 3 in the
  US.
• Agriculture is still the major components in
  developing countries (8.7)

5
Subsistence Agriculture

• Involves nearly total self-sufficiency on the
  part of its members. No exchange (or minimal, if
  any). food for themselves only.
• No knowledge of soil chemistry, fertilizing, or
  irrigation, once the soil become infertile, they
  move to another parcel of land, clear the
  vegetation, turn the soil and try again. 150 to
  200 million people in Africa, Middle America,
  tropical South America and parts of Southeast
  Asia.
• In Africa, S and E Asia, Latin America
• Two types
• Extensive large areas of land and minimal labor
  input per unit area. Production and pop density
  is low.
• Intensive cultivation of small landholdings
  through the expenditure of great amounts of labor
  per unit area. Production and pop density are
  both high. (8.8)

6
Extensive Subsistence Agriculture

• Nomadic herding (8.8) - wandering and controlled
  movement of livestock dependent on natural forage
  - the most extensive type of land use system.
• Sheep, goat, and camels are most common and
  others such as cattle, horses and yaks are
  important too.
• Animal provides milk, cheese, meat for food
  hair, wool and skins for clothing skin for
  shelter and excrement for fuel.
• Nomadic herding is declining. Social/economic/cult
  ure changes are causing nomadic groups to alter
  their ways of life or disappear entirely.
• Shifting cultivation - rotating field once soil
  lose fertility. Swidden and slash-and-burn.
  (8.9)

7
Shifting cultivation/Slash-burn

• Slash-and-burn process of preparing low
  fertility soils for planting. Burning add
  minerals to the soils, in low level of population
• Shifting - rotating the fields to keep soil
  fertile
• After burning, plant crops such as maize (corn)
  millet (cereal grain), rice, manioc, yam, and
  sugarcane

8
Intertillage practice of mixing different seeds
and seedlings in the same swidden

• To reduce the risk of disasters from crop
  failure, to increase the nutritional balance of
  the local diet, to prevent loss of soil moisture,
  control of soil erosion

RRice GGroundnut MMaize YYam WYWhite
yam APAir potato VBamara groundnut CuMelon PpP
umpkin LGourds