Information about Subsistence Farming
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Like most farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, this Cameroonian man cultivates at the subsistence level.
Subsistence agriculture (also known as self sufficiency in terms of agriculture) is a method of farming in which farmers plan to grow only enough food to feed the family farming, pay taxes or feudal dues, and perhaps provide a small marketable surplus. Subsistence agriculture usually refers to a farm that is enough to feed the family but will not be enough for the family to participate extensively in the cash market. The typical subsistence farm has the range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye to what the family will need during the coming year, rather than market prices. Tony Waters (2007:2) writes that "Subsistence peasants are people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace."
Subsistence grain-growing agriculture (predominantly wheat and barley) first emerged during the Neolithic era when humans started to settle in the Nile, Eurphrates, and Indus River Valleys. It was the dominant mode of production in the the world until very recently when market-based capitalism became important. Subsistence horticulture may have developed earlier in South East Asia and Papua New Guinea.
Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of up-country Africa (see Hyden 1981), and other countries of Asia and South America. Subsistence agriculture had by and large disappeared in Europe by the beginning of World War I, and in North America with the movement of share croppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s (Waters 2007:127-129).
Effects on the environment
Subsistence farming is done without purchased fertilizers. Mechanization is with draft animals which can be fed and raised on the farm.In areas which are sparsely populated, subsistence agriculture can be sustainable for a long time. In more densely populated areas, subsistence agriculture may deplete the soil of nutrients, and damage the environment.
One form of subsistence agriculture is shifting cultivation or swidden, a practice common with rain fed agricultural systems. Farmers typically abandon a given plot when soil fertility wanes and move on to more fertile land, often utilizing slash and burn techniques. A considerable fallow period ensues on the abandoned land. it takes up a least land among the 4 types of cultivation but it is only enough for the family.
Opposite
References
Goran Hyden. Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1980.Charles Sellers. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.
Tony Waters. The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: life beneath the level of the marketplace. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2007.
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or (in hardline cases) interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of extreme personal or collective (group-based) autonomy .
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H. vulgare
Binomial name
Hordeum vulgare
L.
Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an annual cereal grain, which serves as a major animal feed crop, with smaller amounts used for malting and in
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Binomial name
Hordeum vulgare
L.
Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an annual cereal grain, which serves as a major animal feed crop, with smaller amounts used for malting and in
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Horticulture (Latin: hortus (garden) + cultura (culture)) is the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture as classically defined is the subdivision of agriculture dealing in gardening, in contrast to agronomy, which deals with field crops and the
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Shifting cultivation
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Slash and burn refers to the cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes. It is sometimes part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock herding.
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Crop rotation or Crop sequencing is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same space in sequential seasons for various benefits such as to avoid the build up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one species is continuously cropped.
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Commercial agriculture: The production of crops for sale, crops intended for widespread distribution (e.g. supermarkets), and any non-food crops such as cotton and tobacco. Commercial agriculture includes livestock production and livestock grazing.
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In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for money. The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family.
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