Topic: Types of Subsistence Agriculture

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Topic Types of Subsistence Agriculture

• Aim How can we differentiate between different
  types of subsistence agriculture?

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Shifting Cultivation Characteristics

1. Practiced in humid, low latitude regions with
   poor soil Approx. 250 million people
2. Farmers clear land for planting by slashing
   vegetation and burning the debris (slash and burn
   agriculture)
3. Farmers grow crops on a cleared field for only a
   few years until nutrients are depleted and then
   leave it uncultivated (fallow) for many years so
   soil can recover
4. Extensive subsistence agriculture

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Future of shifting cultivation

• Land devoted to shifting cultivation is declining
• Being replaced by logging, cattle ranching, and
  cultivation of cash crops
• Can support only a small population
• Destruction of rain forests contributing to
  global warming

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Soil fertility is maintained by rotating
fields-note burned stumps with corn and beans
interplanted. Land cleared is called swidden
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This shifting cultivation farmer in the Ixcan
region of Guatemala is preparing a field for
planting by slashing and burning the vegetation.
The dense vegetation is chopped down, and the
debris is burned in order to provide the soil
with needed nutrients.
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Pastoral Nomadism

• Herding domesticated animals
• Found primarily in arid and semiarid B-type
  climates
• Animals are seldom eaten
• The size of the herd indicates power and prestige
• Type of animal depends on the region
• For example, camels are favored in North Africa
  and Southwest Asia (also goats, sheep, and
  horses) Typical family needs 25-60 goats or sheep
  or 10-15 camels
• Transhumance practiced by some pastoral nomads-
  seasonal migration of livestock between mountains
  and lowland pastures

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Above-Herding sheep in the Middle
East Right-Cattle crossing the Niger River
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Qashqai people use modern roads to practice
pastoral nomadism in the dry lands near Shiraz,
Iran.
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Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

• Intensive subsistence agriculture with wet rice
  dominant
• Wet rice practice of planting rice on dry land
  in a nursery and then moving the seedlings to a
  flooded field to promote growth
• Dominant agriculture in Southeast China, East
  India, and much of Southeast Asia
• Small percent of Asias agricultural land
• Most important source of food in Asia
• Double cropping obtaining two harvests per year
  from one field

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Wet rice terraces, Indonesia. Because wet rice
needs to be grown on flat land, hillsides are
terraced to increase the area of rice production.
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Intensive subsistence agriculture. Rice is
harvested by hand in the large population
concentrations of Asia, including this field in
Indonesia.
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Rice is the most important crop in the large
population concentrations of East, South, and
Southeast Asia. Asian farmers grow more than 90
percent of the world's rice, and two
countriesChina and Indiaaccount for more than
half of world production. Growing rice is a
labor-intensive operation, done mostly by hand.
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• Intensive subsistence agriculture with wet rice
  not dominant
• Climate prevents wet rice production in portions
  of Asia
• Agriculture in India and northeast China is
  devoted to crops other than wet rice (e.g. wheat
  and barley)
• Crop rotation practice of rotating use of
  different fields from crop to crop each year to
  avoid exhausting the soil
• Use of agricultural communes in China under Mao
  (now dismantled)