CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 42 of 120

Correct — D, Intensive subsistence agriculture. The textbook split is between subsistence agriculture, where the farming household consumes almost everything it grows, and commercial agriculture, where the crop or the herd is raised for sale. Subsistence farming has two branches — primitive subsistence, which is shifting cultivation, and intensive subsistence, the densely worked smallholdings of monsoon Asia. Intensive subsistence agriculture therefore belongs on the far side of the line from every other option here. Dairy farming, grain farming and livestock ranching are all standard commercial types, along with mixed farming, plantation agriculture, Mediterranean agriculture and market gardening. The word intensive is what makes the option tempting: intensive says how hard the land is worked, not who the produce is grown for.

• (a)Dairy farming — A commercial type, and the most capital-intensive of them — sheds, fodder storage, milking machines, breeding and veterinary care. It grew up near urban markets in north-western Europe, north-eastern North America and New Zealand, and expanded with refrigeration and fast transport.
• (b)Grain farming — Extensive commercial grain farming is the wheat belt of the Eurasian steppes, the Canadian and American prairies, the Pampas, the South African velds, the Australian downs and the Canterbury plains. Farms are large, mechanised and grown wholly for the market.
• (c)Livestock ranching — Commercial livestock ranching is organised on permanent fenced ranches, stocked to the carrying capacity of the pasture and specialised in one animal. Meat, wool, hides and skins are processed and exported. It is the commercial counterpart of nomadic herding, not a subsistence practice.

NCERT's classification of agriculture turns on the destination of the produce. Subsistence agriculture is one in which the farming areas consume all, or nearly all, of what is grown locally, and it divides into primitive subsistence agriculture — shifting cultivation, known as jhum in north-eastern India, milpa in central America and ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia — and intensive subsistence agriculture. Commercial agriculture covers commercial grain farming, mixed farming, dairy farming, plantation agriculture, commercial livestock ranching, Mediterranean agriculture and market gardening.

Intensive subsistence agriculture is the densely populated monsoon-Asian pattern: very small holdings, family labour, farmyard manure, little machinery, and two forms — one dominated by wet paddy, the other by wheat, soyabean, barley and sorghum where paddy will not grow. Yield per unit of land is high and output per worker low, which is exactly the profile of a system feeding its own household rather than a market. The trap in this question is purely verbal. If you read intensive as a synonym for developed or organised, the option looks commercial; read it as a description of labour and land input and the classification is obvious.

• Subsistence agriculture is grouped into primitive subsistence agriculture, which is shifting cultivation, and intensive subsistence agriculture.
• Intensive subsistence agriculture is largely found in the densely populated regions of monsoon Asia and splits into a wet-paddy-dominated form and a non-paddy form.
• Its yield per unit of area is high but its productivity per worker is low.
• Commercial livestock ranching is practised on permanent fenced ranches, stocked to the pasture's carrying capacity, in New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay and the United States.
• Extensive commercial grain farming is best developed in the Eurasian steppes, the Canadian and American prairies, the Pampas, the velds, the Australian downs and the Canterbury plains.

• Reading intensive as a marker of commercial organisation; it describes the input of labour and capital per unit of land.
• Placing dairy farming with subsistence livestock keeping because both involve milk animals.

As an odd-one-out on agricultural types, or as a regional-name-to-practice match such as milpa or ladang.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Milpa and ladang are regional names for which one of the following?

  • (a)Shifting cultivation
  • (b)Mixed farming
  • (c)Market gardening
  • (d)Plantation agriculture

  Answer(a) Shifting cultivation — milpa in central America and Mexico, ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia, jhum in north-eastern India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is characteristic of intensive subsistence agriculture?

  • (a)Large farms worked by heavy machinery
  • (b)High yield per unit area with low productivity per worker
  • (c)Single-crop estates producing for export
  • (d)Fenced ranches stocked to carrying capacity

  Answer(b) High yield per unit area with low productivity per worker — small holdings worked intensively by family labour, chiefly in monsoon Asia.