Which of the following is not a characteristic of intensive subsistence agriculture ?
(a) Intensive cultivation
(b) Animal husbandry is a complementary business to agriculture
(c) The vast size of the

Question

Which of the following is not a characteristic of intensive subsistence agriculture ?
(a) Intensive cultivation
(b) Animal husbandry is a complementary business to agriculture
(c) The vast size of the farm
(d) Maximum yield production per hectare.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), 'Only (c)'. The stem prints 'not' in bold, so the question asks which of the four printed statements is NOT a characteristic of intensive subsistence agriculture, and the answer must contain the false statement only. Intensive subsistence agriculture is the farming system of the densely populated monsoon lands of east, south and south-east Asia — China, Japan, Korea, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — and its defining condition is that a very large rural population has to be fed from a very small amount of land per household. Everything else about the system follows from that. Holdings are small and often fragmented further by inheritance; labour input per hectare is enormous, much of it manual and family labour with simple implements; manure, irrigation and, in the modern period, fertiliser and high-yielding varieties are applied heavily; and land is worked to its limit through multiple cropping. Statement (a), intensive cultivation, is therefore the system's own name and definition. Statement (d), maximum yield per hectare, is its objective and its result — output per unit of land is high, even though output per worker is low, and that contrast between high land productivity and low labour productivity is the standard way of describing this system. Statement (b), animal husbandry as a business complementary to agriculture, is likewise characteristic: cattle and buffalo supply draught power and manure and a supplementary income from milk, and the household economy of the small Asian farm depends on them. Statement (c), the vast size of the farm, is the one that does not belong: large farms are the mark of extensive agriculture — commercial grain farming on the prairies and steppes, or commercial livestock ranching — where holdings are measured in hundreds of hectares, machinery replaces labour, and yield per hectare is comparatively low. Only statement (c) is not a characteristic, so option (3) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Statement (a) is intensive cultivation, which is not merely a characteristic of this system but its name — 'intensive' describes precisely the application of large amounts of labour and inputs to a small area of land in order to extract the maximum from it. Selecting this option in a question that asks for what is NOT a characteristic means rejecting the system's own definition. It is the option a candidate lands on when the bolded negation in the stem has been missed and the question has been read as asking for the single most characteristic feature.  (b) Both statements named here are genuine features. Animal husbandry complementary to cultivation, statement (b), is integral to the small Asian farm, which depends on livestock for draught power, manure and supplementary income. Maximum yield per hectare, statement (d), is the system's whole objective and the reason such heavy labour and input are applied to so little land. Choosing this pair usually means the candidate has read the stem positively and is nominating what looks like the least essential features, when in fact the false statement is the one about farm size.  (d) This option correctly includes statement (c), the vast size of the farm, and then adds two statements that are true of the system. Intensive subsistence agriculture is characterised by high yields per hectare and by livestock kept alongside crops, so condemning statements (b) and (d) as non-characteristics is wrong. In negative questions of this shape, spotting the false statement is only half the work; the answer must exclude every statement that is true, and this option is the standard trap for candidates who identify the error and then over-select.

Concept: Agricultural systems are classified by the intensity with which land and labour are used and by whether output is consumed or sold. Intensive subsistence agriculture occupies one extreme: tiny holdings, very high labour and input per hectare, high yields per hectare but low output per worker, and production primarily for the household. Extensive commercial grain farming occupies the other: very large holdings, high mechanisation, low labour per hectare, relatively low yields per hectare but very high output per worker, and production entirely for the market — the wheat farms of the Canadian and American prairies, the Pampas, the Ukrainian steppe and the Australian downs. Between them lie mixed farming, dairy farming, plantation agriculture, market gardening and commercial livestock rearing. The single most useful discrimination for examinations is between yield per hectare and output per worker, because it is exactly the pair that intensive and extensive systems reverse.

State PCS 2024 Q16 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q16 — Geography PYQ with Answer