Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, rather than market prices. Tony Waters[1] writes: "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 Revolution when humans began to settle in the Nile, Euphrates, and Indus River Valleys. Subsistence agriculture also emerged independently in Mexico where it was based on maize cultivation, and the Andes where it was based on the domestication of the potato. Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently, when market-based capitalism became widespread. Subsistence horticulture may have developed independently in South East Asia and Papua New Guinea.
Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of up-country Africa,[2] and other countries of Asia and Latin 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 sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s.[1] In Central and Eastern Europe subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy since about 1990.[3]
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In this type of agriculture, a patch of forest land is cleared by a combination of felling and burning, and crops are grown. After 2-3 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 and the process continues. 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 heavy erosion.
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 cattle, sheep, goats, camels and/or yaks for milk, skin, meat and wool. This way of life is common in parts of central and western asia, India, east and south-west africa and northern eurasia. Bhotiyas and gujjars are the nomadic tribes of himalayas.
In very densely populated countries like India and China, farmers use their small land holding to produce enough for their own consumption, while the little remaining produce is used for exchange against other goods. These farmers try to obtain maximum yield from the available lands by intensifying cultivation techniques, including the preparation of paddy fields which can be used year after year. In the most intensive situation, farmers may even create terraces along steep hillsides to cultivate rice paddy. Such fields are found in densely populated parts of Asia, most famously in The Philippines. They may also intensify by using manure, artificial irrigation and animal waste as fertilizer.
During the early years of the Soviet Union, the Scissors Crisis of 1923 led to subsistence farming. This caused some to worry about the possibility of a famine among those in cities.
Waters, Tony (2010). "Farmer Power: The continuing confrontation between subsistence farmers and development bureaucrats"/
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