1. Chapter 8 Livelihood and Economy - Primary Activities
Classification of Economic Activity
Subsistence Agriculture
Commercial Agriculture
Other Primary Activities
Trade in primary activities
Tea Plantation, Sri Lanka
Copyright 2003 by Jon C Malinowski

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/Construction/Power Production
Primary Activities
Agriculture/Gathering/Extractive 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. (Fig growing season)
10% of the total earth land is for crop farming.
Declining trend in agriculture employment in developing countries (Fig 8.6 – Agricultural Employments)
Developed - 8% in most of W. Europe, < 3% in the US.
Agriculture is still the major components in developing countries (Fig 8.7 – Agriculture and GDP)

5. Agriculture Paradox: Hunger in a World of Plenty?
Periodic Market, India
Copyright 2003 by Jon C Malinowski
Rice Paddies, India
Copyright 2003 by Jon C Malinowski

6. Subsistence Agriculture
Involves nearly total self-sufficiency on the part of its members. No exchange (or minimal, if any). food for themselves only.
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. (Figure 8.8 Subsistence Agriculture Areas)

7. Extensive Subsistence Agriculture
Nomadic herding (Figure 8.8 – Subsistence agriculture) - 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/culture 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) Slash-and-Burn (or Shifting Cultivation)
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.

8. 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

9. 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
R:Rice
G:Groundnut
M:Maize
Y:Yam
WY:White yam
AP:Air potato
V:Bamara groundnut
Cu:Melon
Pp:Pumpkin
L:Gourds

10. Swidden Agriculture (279)
Low pop. density much land is needed to support few people
Shifting Cultivation is founded on the islands of Kalimantan (Borneo), New Guinea, and Sumatra in Indonesia. Now only in uplands of SE Asia in Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Philippines, Nearly the whole of Central and West Africa away from the coasts, Brazil’s Amazon basin, and large portions of Central America
Boserup thesis - pop increases necessitate increased inputs of labor and technology to compensate for reductions in the natural yields of swidden farming. The pop increase forces an increased used of tech in farming, converting from extensive to intensive subsistence agriculture.

11. Intensive Subsistence Systems
Half of the people of the world engaged in this activity
Exchange of farm commodities
Mostly in monsoon Asia. warm and moist river valleys and delta
Planting rice shoots by hand in standing fresh water is a tedious art (8.10)
Cooler/ drier Asia - wheat and millet is planted.
Rice provides % calories to over 2.8 billion pop.
Water management is crucial to the rice production
Rice Landscape - levees, reservoirs, canals, drainage channels, and terraces to extend level land to valley slopes
Swine, ducks and chickens are main meat. Cattle used for labor and produce fertilizers.

12. The Economy of Chinese Village
Rice planted in March and August, harvested in July and Nov.
Water buffalo, transplanting of rice seedlings from seedbed.
Two weeding by hands
Harvest - threshing
Vegetable gardening, spring/summer grows eggplants, squash and beans, green-leafed in fall to spring. Watering with the long-handled wooden dipper, additional fertilizer, usually diluted urine or a mixture of diluted urine and excreta was given every 10 days or so.
Threshing rice
See other links
Water buffalo

13. Urban Subsistence Farming
Provide 1/7 of the world food production - mostly in Asia engaged in small garden plots, backyard livestock breeding and raising fish in ponds and streams.
China, Taiwan, Cuba, Kenya and many other countries residents engaged in urban subsistence farming.
In parts of the developing world, this has reduced the incidence of adult and child malnutrition in cities. Many rely on this as sole income
Advantages- convert waste from problem to resource by reducing run-off and erosion from open dumps and by avoiding costs of wastewater treatment and solid waste disposal. Examples - Sudan, Calcutta..
Disadvantage - diseases, water pollution

14. Cost of territorial extension
Forest land turned into farm land - soil loss followed forest destruction.
Intensification and the Green Revolution
increased production of existing crop land accounted for most of the growth of agr. production by:
increased application of fertilizer/pesticides
Green Revolution

15. Origin of Green Revolution
Started in 1960s, Philippino research crossed a Chinese rice with Indonesian variety and produced IR8 rice with bigger head of grain and stronger stem. In 1982, they produced IR36, the most widely grown crop on Earth
IR36-mixed from 13 parents genetic resistance against 15 pests and growing cycle of 110 days which makes three crops per year possible.
Charting of genome (12 chromosomes) is ongoing, it will eventually increase the production and develop the resistance to diseases and pests
Green Revolution trends in food production Saving an estimated one billion people from starvation. Increased calories per person, pop with adequate food in developing countries jumped from 55% to 80%.

16. Green Revolution
Disadvantages - irrigation destroyed large tracts of land, groundwater depletion, water wars, loss of traditional/ subsistence farming, food production aiming at export, rural society destroyed, reduced variety of crops, rural pop moved to urban
Not all areas benefited from Green Revolution - reasons (belated research effort, great range of growing conditions)
Fig genetic diversity of crop varieties , fewer than 100 species provide most of the world’s food supply.
Asia - gains fell off - little prime land, less water, adverse ecol. and social consequences. Even biotech can’t help (consumers’ resistance..)
Loss of domestic food availability

17. Women and Green Revolution
Women and the Green Revolution
Women grow at least half of the world’s food and up to 80% in Africa.. Women perform about 90% of the world in Africa.
Men leave for urban for other jobs, women workload is increasing. Women mostly do not share equally with men in the rewards from agriculture. Working longer hours and less incomes due to cultural and economical factors.
How women can benefit from the Green Revolution?

18. Commercial Agriculture
Production Control
short supply should command an increased market price (after typhoon in Asia, vegetable price going up)
government control prices either too high or too low. (farm economy distorted while low food price is enforced, material distortion while stop importing and subsidizing)
Today’s contractual arrangement in the U.S. up to 1/3 from 10% within 50 years.
Older supply/demand market price mechanism is not totally valid
crop or livestock mix selected by commercial farmers reflects an assessment of market demands and prices
involves intensive land use near markets and extensive land use at more distant locations.

19. von Thunen’s model (8.14)
intensity of land use, higher priced/more perishable goods are produced in land closer to the city. High shipping and high demand commodities found in inner rings.
“A portion of each crop is eaten by the wheels” - observed by von Thunen, distance between market and production site is the most important determination of the location
Transport gradients (8.15) - crops with highest transport cost and market values will be grown nearest to the market.
Transportation cost affect the shape of Rings (8.16)
Industrial and post-industrial economy, land use is determined by factors with urban expansion. von Thunen model is less predictable

20. Intensive Commercial Agriculture
Characterized by high yields per unit of cultivated land
Large amount of input - justified by fruits, vegetable and dairy products. Truck Farm produces wide range of vegetable and fruits with refrigerated trucks and custom packaging. (distribution of truck farm 8.17)
Livestock-grain farming - growing grain for livestock feed. corn and livestock at same farm reducing transportation cost. Livestock price higher than feed, farmer convert their corn into meat on the farm by feeding it to the livestock. In W. Europe, ¾ cropland is for livestock grain farm. However, the value of its products per unit is less than that of the truck farm. They are farther from the main markets than are horticultural and dairy farms.

21. Extensive Commercial Agriculture
Farmland values decline westward with increasing distance from the northeastern market of the US, but not increasing while near west coast. Climate and environmental considerations (increasing aridity and mountain ranges..) (8.18)
Large-scale wheat farming - requires large amount capital input. Spring wheat (Dakotas, e Montana, S Canada) winter wheat (Kansas..) Argentina in S hemisphere. Wheat is the most grain production in the world (8.20)
Livestock ranching - oriented to the urban market of industrialized countries. Confined to areas of European settlement., Caused destruction of tropical rain forests in Central America and the Amazon basin due to expanded cattle ranching. (in land with low quality, low pop density, and require low labor)

22. Special Crops - mostly due to climate factor
Mediterranean agriculture - grapes, olives, oranges, figs, vegetables and similar commodities - needs warm temp. all year round plus summer sunshine. Summer drought and winter rain, irrigation system is needed. (8.21)
Plantation Crops - foreign to the areas (8.22)
tea in India and Sri Lanka, jute in India and Bangladesh, rubber in Malaysia and Indonesia, cacao in Ghana and Nigeria, can sugar in Cuba...., coffee in Brazil and Colombia, banana in central America.
Most plantation in coastal area, easy for export.

23. Planned Economy
Agricultural communes in Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and mainland China. Program set up by Stalin.
In China, communist regime redistributed all farmlands to some 350 million and collectivized into 700,000 communes in 1957 and reduced to 50,000 with 13,000 members each.
Free market in China (8.24)
Loss of farm land to urbanization, is not compensated by yield increases would again raise the prospect of shortage of domestically produced food.

24. Primary Activities: Resource Exploitation
Gathering industries - fishing and forestry
Extractive industries - mining and quarrying
Renewable resources - materials can be consumed and then replenished quickly by natural or by human-assisted processes. such as forest, fish, grasslands, and animals. Maximum sustainable yield - max. rate of use that will not impair its ability to be renewed or to maintain the same future productivity. If exceeded, renewable will become nonrenewable.
Nonrenewable resources - exist in finite amount and either are not replaced by natural processes.

25. Resource Exploitation
Fishing the Yangtze
Copyright 2003 by Jon C Malinowski

26. Fishing - provide 19% of all animal protein in the human diet (5% in all protein)
steady fish harvest increase (8.26) except in 1998 (El Nino)
99% fish are from coastal wetlands, estuaries,and continental shelf. 1% from open sea. Commercial capture fishing for market only in northern hemisphere, tropical fish do not school and contain higher oil content, only for local use (fig 8.27 annual fish harvests – El nino, 1993, 1998 and Chinese over-reporting)
Overfishing - due to the accepted view of “open seas” (fig 8.28)
tragedy of the commons - a open resource without collective controls being exploited to the max.
Aquaculture - farm ponds, catfish and crayfish ponds in SE US
Mariculture - coastal lagoon
30% of worlds’ fish harvest from aquaculture and mariculture production.

27. Forest - Covers 30% of the earth land.
1) Northern coniferous (softwood) - largest- for construction, paper..(8.30) 2)Deciduous hardwoods (oak, maple, hickory) reduced by urbanization and agriculture - for furniture..
3) Lowland hardwood for fuelwood and charcoal and special wood exported for lumber. Malaysia accounted for 60% of the world hardwood logs export.
Roundwood production -
45% for industrial consumption and 55% for fuelwood and charcoal. Developing countries rely on fuelwood and charcoal resulting in the serious depletion of tropical forest stands. In tropical areas, deforestation rates exceeds reforestation by 10 to 15 times.
since 1970s, 25 to 30 million acres of tropical forestland have been converted to agricultural land and in S and Central America additional millions of acres been cleared for beef cattle for the N American market (8.31)
Half of roundwood production (for industrial markets) are from US,Canada and Russia and less than 20% from developing countries due to the transportation cost, explained by von Thunen’s model.

28. Mining and Quarrying - Definition of reserves (8.32)
Extract industry depend on the exploitation of minerals unevenly distributed in amounts and concentrations determined by past geologic events, not by market demand.
In 1980s, many iron ore-producing plants were shut down due to the cheap import.
Metallic minerals - production influenced by quantity of ore available, richness of ore, and distance to market.
After h-quality ore is exploited, the demand for low-grade ores has been increasing. upgrading process done near site (concentration of copper, smelting facilities 8.33) and refinery at the market areas.
And, large deposits of low-grade ore is being exploited instead of h-q ores due to the cost and consideration of long-term source of supply.
Most important extractive industries - nonmetallic Minerals (in terms of volume and weight), mostly used for construction, only economically feasible when they are near the site where they are to be used. (8.34,8.35)

29. Mineral Fuels
Coal classified by rank (carbon content and fuel quality) and grade (measure of its waste material content), mined by strip-mining and shaft mining (Appalachian and Europe). Coal will last many centuries but not for oil.
Petroleum reserves can only last 40 to 150 years. Petroleum is the most unevenly distributed resources.
OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries)
See Chapter8-Petroleum.ppt
Natural Gas - highly efficient and requires little processing

30. The End of Cheap Oil
Oil reserve gbo (gigga-barrels of oil) 25 gbo/yr consumption, but with 2% increase of consumption, it won’t last 40 yrs …..New discoveries - 7 gbo/yr
US gasoline price -
Americans consumed 19 million barrels/day=2.9 g/p/d=1000 g/person/yr, production=2.6 bbls in Reserves can only last 5 years if without import.
Gulf of Mexico holds 15 bb of oil, high cost required to exploit.

31. Oil discoveries and Production
1960
2000
Production
Discoveries
1860
2100
data source: Scientific American, March 1998

32. Evolution of gasoline price