definition - SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE

definition of Wikipedia

Subsistence farming is the kind of farming done by farmers who have small plots, enough only for themselves. Literally, subsistence agriculture means no extra food is produced to sell or trade. This means farming doesn't give them money to buy things. However, today most subsistence farmers also do trade to some degree.

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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 principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and secondarily toward 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.' However, despite the primacy of self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, today most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree, though usually it is for goods that are not necessary for survival, and may include sugar, iron roofing sheets, bicycles, used clothing, and so forth. Most subsistence farmers today live in developing countries. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, 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.^[2]

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.

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Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of rural Africa,^[3] and parts of Asia and Latin America. Subsistence agriculture had largely 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] As recently as the 1950s, it was still common on family farms in North America and Europe to grow much of a family's own food and make much of its own clothing, although sales of some of the farm's production earned enough currency to buy certain staples, typically including sugar; coffee and tea; petroleum distillates (petrol, kerosene, fuel oil); textile products such as bolts of cloth, needles, and thread; medicines; hardware products such as nails, screws, and wire; and a few discretionary items such as candy or books. Many of the preceding items, as well as occasional services from physicians, veterinarians, blacksmiths, and others, were often bought with barter rather than currency. In Central and Eastern Europe subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy since about 1990.^[4]

Types

Shifting agriculture ('slash and burn' or Jhooming)

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.

While this 'slash and burn' technique may describe the method for opening new land, commonly the farmers in question have in existence at the same time smaller fields, sometimes merely gardens, near the homestead there they practice intensive 'non-shifting' techniques until shortage of fields where they can employ 'slash and burn' to clear land and (by the burning) provide fertilizer (ash). Such gardens nearer the homestead often regularly receive household refuse, the manure of any household chickens or goats, and compost piles where refuse is thrown initially just to get it out of the way. However, such farmers often recognize the value of such compost and apply it regularly to their smaller fields. They also may irrigate part of such fields if they are near a source of water.

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 suggest.

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 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. Examples are the nomadic Bhotiyas and Gujjars of the Himalayas.

Intensive subsistence farming

In very densely populated countries like India and China, farmers use their small land holdings 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 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.

Historic examples of subsistence farming

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.

See also

References

1. ^ ^abTony Waters. The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: life beneath the level of the marketplace. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2007.
2. ^Marvin P Miracle,'Subsistence Agriculture: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts', American Journal of Agricultural Economics, May 1968, pp. 292-310.)
3. ^Goran Hyden. Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1980.
4. ^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.

Further reading

• Charles Sellers. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.
• Howard, Sir Albert. (1943) An Agricultural Testament. Oxford University Press.
• Waters, Tony (2010). 'Farmer Power: The continuing confrontation between subsistence farmers and development bureaucrats'/

Marvin P Miracle, 'Subsistence Agriculture: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts,American Journal of Agricultural Economics, May, 1968, pp292-310.

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noun

• 1The action or fact of maintaining or supporting oneself, especially at a minimal level.

  • ‘How can you have free trade, and bring the cost of goods down, by giving people wages, which are below the level of subsistence, and maintain that population?’
  • ‘It's a very efficient dormitory facility and a secondary means of subsistence for people who do other work.’
  • ‘These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense.’
  • ‘It keeps the population fully up to the level of the means of subsistence; and, were its power ten times greater than it really is, it could do no more.’
  • ‘Their account of the shipwreck in Bermuda does not explain how the leader of the expedition managed to restore control when the island offered land for the taking and ready means of subsistence.’
  • ‘As world population increases and structural unemployment grows, more people find themselves in poverty and without available means of subsistence.’
  • ‘Forcibly separated from the means of subsistence, by acts of enclosure in England, clearances in Scotland, they had little choice but to work for Gradgrind in his mill.’
  • ‘It then seemed to the classicists that the real wages, or means of subsistence, had to be advanced to the laborers.’
  • ‘She was without visible means of subsistence and was, he said, a stupid and lazy girl.’
  • ‘The Navy's land seizure knocked out most of the island's agriculture and effectively blocked the development of tourism, leaving commercial fishing as the primary means of subsistence.’
  • ‘There can be no real human liberation, Marx explained, unless the productivity of labour is so high that the majority of the population is no longer forced to spend most of its time trying to secure its means of subsistence.’
  • ‘Many spouses live apart for considerable periods of time; often the economic situation is so desperate that they have to look for means of subsistence on their own.’
  • ‘Somewhere back in China a factory manager is making a fortune, but the majority of people involved in eastern European trading earn barely the means of subsistence.’
  • ‘The means of subsistence were practically the same as those of to-day, except that cattle-raising was more general.’
  • ‘No one complained of being late for work: most of the residents were unemployed and had lived here for years without visible means of subsistence.’
  • ‘They had no need to conspire in the expropriation of the means of subsistence by capitalists, because a free labor market was in place.’
  • ‘The principle that there is a perpetual tendency in the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is usually attributed to Malthus.’
  • ‘Their means of subsistence was almost always assured; the interest of the master coincided with their own on this point.’
  • ‘Hunting has traditionally been an important means of subsistence in the Caucasus Mountain region.’
  • ‘Millions who have been unemployed for many years are losing their means of subsistence.’

  maintenance, keep, upkeep, support, livelihood, living, board, board and lodging

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1The means of maintaining or supporting oneself.
     ‘the garden provided not only subsistence but a little cash crop’
     • ‘The pittance paid out in compensation for retrenchment has provided barely a few months subsistence, with former employees being thrown into abject poverty.’
     • ‘I wonder if these were partly caused by the urban residents themselves who have long since shown little concern, even disdain, for those who trade physical labour for subsistence.’
     • ‘Although most own very small fields, rights even in these can provide supplementary subsistence.’
     • ‘For those who embarked on a literary career, the only recourse was to draw their subsistence from the value of their writing when they signed their contract with a bookseller.’
     • ‘Women's wages were calculated on the assumption that they supplemented a family economy rather than providing individual subsistence.’
     • ‘The issues to be resolved range from the grander puzzles of human evolution and speciation to parochial matters of subsistence and trade.’
     • ‘Thanks to local people's generosity, they have already been able to provide a temporary room and subsistence for eight individuals.’
     • ‘She worked as a cleaning lady, waitress, nursing home aid, only to realize that a single job does not provide enough money for subsistence.’
     • ‘The average citizen, however, is fortunate if they provide him with subsistence.’
     • ‘Marriage was far less important for slave women than for white women; slave women, unlike their white counterparts, neither shared property with their husbands nor received subsistence from them.’
     • ‘And yet, those marginal families, who are most likely to be dependent on subsistence are those who exist outside of the local economy created by ANSCA.’
     • ‘Alone among the New Deal agricultural agencies, they provided subsistence and operating credit for farmers.’
     • ‘For a time, beginning in the 1920s, fox fur trading served as a supplement to subsistence.’
     • ‘This system is capable of providing for family subsistence but not of producing a large surplus for sale.’
     • ‘But, of course, it wasn't the weather that had done it: it was the months of dependence in the hotel, with nothing to do, but with a basic subsistence provided.’
  2. 1.2as modifierDenoting or relating to production at a level sufficient only for one's own use or consumption, without any surplus for trade.
     • ‘The decline in subsistence production for domestic consumption means that people are doubly disappointed, as they need to buy rice and have no income.’
     • ‘Costs of living differ radically, and where subsistence production accounts for a large part of the food supply, GNP grossly underestimates wealth.’
     • ‘They have a fallback in subsistence production and other cash crops, such as cocoa and copra.’
     • ‘They have always played an important role in agriculture, both in subsistence production and in the production of cash crops on small peasant farms.’
     • ‘Given overall limitations to their mobility and associated subsistence production, we find nothing odd about the Dorset pattern.’
     • ‘The Parliament of landlords which took over politics in 1640 was not interested in preserving a peasantry engaged in subsistence production.’
     • ‘Other factors contributing to such households are housing shortages and the need to generate income through both wage labor and subsistence production.’
     • ‘Participation in the market economy has blurred the strict demarcation of gender roles associated with subsistence production.’
     • ‘Hence in order to encourage people off the land and away from subsistence production, the incentive to produce for oneself and one's family had to be removed.’
     • ‘We have not argued that the position of a subsistence producer, living at the edge of hunger, is the same as that of an affluent suburban dweller.’
     • ‘In a classic subsistence economy, producers are in a direct conversation with nature and make limited demands on a variety of natural system elements.’
     • ‘Throughout much of Africa, the main rural production is subsistence agriculture, which cannot meet the needs of an expanding population.’
     • ‘These developments all contributed to massive surplus extractions from subsistence producers confined to the reserves.’
     • ‘She and her husband own four acres of land, sufficient for subsistence agriculture but not much else.’
     • ‘This implies among other things that the wage rate is equal to the subsistence basket evaluated in production prices.’
     • ‘In general, FSA personnel helped clients to develop farm plans that moved them away from cash crop agriculture toward a mixed livestock and subsistence economy.’
     • ‘Recent research has indicated that the technologically efficient British agriculture was producing, at least in grain, a large surplus over the subsistence needs of its people.’
     • ‘For women facing the uncertainty of cash remittances or declining income, subsistence production becomes an important safety net.’
     • ‘Nor must it be forgotten that there were many European societies, even at the end of the eighteenth century, in which privileged groups thoroughly cornered all consumption above the subsistence minimum.’
     • ‘We know that household and village subsistence economies were predominant in India until at least the early years of the independence era.’

• 2Law
  The state of remaining in force or effect.

  ‘rights of occupation normally only continue during the subsistence of the marriage’

  • ‘The bank's lien would, after all, continue only during the subsistence of the debenture, which the debtor would at all times have the right to redeem.’
  • ‘The only duty to the former client which survives the termination of the client relationship is a continuing duty to preserve the confidentiality of information imparted during its subsistence.’
  • ‘That preliminary record is then published with the object of inviting comments and objections from persons interested either in the subsistence of the right of way or to deny its subsistence.’
  • ‘Their right to remain here depends upon the subsistence of the visa.’
  • ‘Most notably, the United States has been removing formal requirements for copyright subsistence, in line with the Berne Convention.’