Primary Activities

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Geography Class XII (Fundamentals of Human Geography), Chapter 4.

Why do coastal people fish and plains people farm?

Nobody has to be told to fish when they live on a coast with a rich sea, or to plough when they live on a fertile flat plain. The land and climate quietly make the choice. This chapter is about the activities that take things straight from nature, and about how the same piece of land can support a hunter, a herder, a rice farmer or a mine depending on climate, technology and money. Once you see that logic, the long lists of regions and crops become much easier to remember.

What counts as a primary activity

Human activities that generate income are called economic activities. They fall into four groups: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary. Primary activities depend directly on the environment because they use the earth's resources: land, water, vegetation, building materials and minerals. They include hunting and gathering, pastoral activities, fishing, forestry, agriculture, and mining and quarrying. People engaged in them are called red collar workers, because their work is outdoors.

Hunting and gathering: the oldest economic activity

The earliest humans lived on what they could hunt and what edible plants they could gather from nearby forests. Hunting and gathering are the oldest known economic activities. Early hunters used tools of stone, twigs and arrows, so the number of animals killed stayed limited. People in very cold and extremely hot climates survived mainly by hunting, and coastal people still catch fish, though fishing has been modernised by technology. Today many species have become extinct or endangered because of illegal hunting, which is called poaching.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: hunting and gathering are the oldest economic activities, and illegal hunting has endangered many species. In reality: in India, hunting of wild animals is prohibited under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, which is the legal answer to the chapter's question about why hunting has been banned. Why it matters: with modern weapons, hunting is no longer a small scale subsistence activity but a threat to whole species, which is why it is regulated.

Gathering is practised in regions with harsh climate. It often involves primitive societies who take both plants and animals for food, shelter and clothing. It needs little capital and a very low level of technology, the yield per person is very low, and there is little or no surplus.

In modern times some gathering has become market oriented. Gatherers collect valuable plant parts, process them simply and sell them.

The sticky base of chewing gum, called chicle, is made from the milky juice of the zapota tree. Gathering has little chance of becoming important at the global level. It cannot compete in the world market, and synthetic products of better quality and lower price have replaced many items that tropical forest gatherers once supplied.

Pastoralism: living with animals

At some stage human beings realised that hunting is unsustainable and began to domesticate animals. People in different climates selected and domesticated the animals of their own region. Today animal rearing is practised at either the subsistence or the commercial level, depending on geography and technology.

Nomadic herding regions. Pastoral nomadism is found in three regions: the core region from the Atlantic shores of North Africa eastwards across the Arabian peninsula into Mongolia and Central China, the tundra region of Eurasia, and small areas in south west Africa and on the island of Madagascar in the southern hemisphere.

Animals by region. The animal kept depends on climate.

Transhumance. Herders move in search of pasture over long horizontal distances or vertically from one elevation to another. The movement from plains to mountain pastures in summer and back to the plains in winter is called transhumance. In the Himalayas it is done by the Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis and Bhotiyas. In the tundra, herders move south to north in summer and north to south in winter.

The number of pastoral nomads is falling and the area they use is shrinking. The chapter gives two reasons: the imposition of political boundaries and new settlement plans by different countries.

Pause and predict: a herding community walks its flock from the valley to high pastures in May and returns in October. Is this nomadic herding, ranching, or transhumance?

Check your answer: transhumance, a specific form of seasonal herding between plains and mountain pastures. Ranching stays on fixed fenced land, and "nomadic herding" is the broader category.

Agriculture: the classification at a glance

Agriculture is practised under many combinations of physical and socio-economic conditions, so many systems exist. By method of farming, the chapter groups them as subsistence and commercial. By organisation, it adds co-operative and collective farming.

The classification in one line: Agriculture → Subsistence (primitive, intensive) · Commercial (plantation, extensive grain, mixed, dairy, Mediterranean, market gardening and horticulture, factory farming) · by organisation: Co-operative and Collective.

Subsistence agriculture

In subsistence agriculture, the farming area consumes all or nearly all of what it grows locally. There are two kinds.

Primitive subsistence agriculture (shifting cultivation). Practised by many tribes in the tropics, especially in Africa, South and Central America and Southeast Asia. Vegetation is cleared by fire and the ashes add fertility, which is why it is also called slash and burn agriculture. Patches are very small and cultivated with primitive tools such as sticks and hoes. After three to five years the soil loses fertility, the farmer moves to another patch and may return later. A major problem is that the cycle of jhum gets shorter and shorter as fertility is lost.

Two views. For the exam: shifting cultivation is slash and burn, soils lose fertility in three to five years, the jhum cycle is shrinking, and its future is bleak. Another reading: researchers who study these systems note that where land is plentiful and fallow periods are long, the forest regrows and the system can be sustainable. The trouble begins when population pressure and land shortage force farmers back to the same patch sooner. So the pressure on the system, more than the method itself, is what makes it unsustainable.

Intensive subsistence agriculture. Largely found in the densely populated regions of monsoon Asia. It has two forms.

Why wet paddy farms are tiny. Many families live on little land in monsoon Asia, so each holding is small. Farmers make up for this by working the land intensively with family labour. Yields per hectare are high, but because so many hands work a tiny plot, the output per worker stays low.

Commercial agriculture

The Europeans colonised many parts of the world and introduced some forms of agriculture, among them plantations, which were mainly profit oriented, large scale production systems.

Plantation history. Plantation agriculture was introduced by the Europeans in colonies in the tropics. The French set up cocoa and coffee plantations in west Africa. The British set up large tea gardens in India and Sri Lanka, rubber plantations in Malaysia, and sugarcane and banana plantations in the West Indies. The Spanish and Americans invested in coconut and sugarcane in the Philippines, and the Dutch once held a monopoly of sugarcane in Indonesia. Some coffee fazendas in Brazil are still managed by Europeans. Today ownership of most plantations has passed to governments or nationals of the countries concerned.

Why extensive grain farming has low yield per acre but high yield per person. The farms are enormous and the machines do the work, so only a few workers handle a vast area. Each acre gets limited labour and inputs and so gives a modest yield, but a single worker with a combine can harvest many hectares in a day, so output per worker is very high.

Pause and predict: which has the higher yield per acre and which the higher yield per worker: a Southeast Asian wet paddy farm or a Canadian prairie wheat farm?

Check your answer: the paddy farm gives the higher yield per acre, with intense family labour on small land. The prairie farm gives the higher yield per worker, with mechanisation on huge land. This pairing is the standard comparison between intensive subsistence and extensive commercial farming.

Mediterranean advantage. The region also produces citrus fruits and is the home of viticulture, or grape cultivation. Its best quality grapes make high quality wines, and inferior grapes are dried into raisins and currants. Olives and figs are also grown.

Market gardening details. The Netherlands specialises in flowers and horticultural crops, especially tulips, which are flown to major cities of Europe. Where farmers specialise in vegetables only, the system is truck farming, so called because the distance of the farm from the market is the distance a truck can cover overnight. Factory farming is a modern development in industrial regions of western Europe and North America, in which livestock, particularly poultry and cattle, are reared in stalls and pens, fed on manufactured feed and carefully protected from disease. It needs heavy capital for buildings, machinery, veterinary services, heating and lighting, and breed selection and scientific breeding are important features.

Farming by organisation

Mining: from the copper age to the industrial age

Mineral discovery marks stages in human history: the copper age, the bronze age and the iron age. In ancient times minerals were mainly used for tools, utensils and weapons. The real development of mining began with the industrial revolution, and its importance keeps growing.

What decides whether a mine is profitable.

Methods of mining. The method depends on the mode of occurrence and the nature of the ore.

Developed economies are retreating from the mining, processing and refining stages of production because of high labour costs, while developing countries with a large labour force and striving for a higher standard of living are becoming more important. Several countries of Africa and a few of South America and Asia earn over fifty per cent of their earnings from minerals alone.

Two views. For the exam: developing countries are becoming more important in mining, and some earn more than half their income from minerals. Another reading: economists debate whether heavy dependence on mineral earnings helps or hurts a country. Some argue that it can leave an economy exposed to price swings and slow other sectors, while others point to countries that used mineral income to build a wider economy. Most agree the outcome depends on how the income is managed.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Human Development shows how livelihoods feed into the income dimension of development.
• Next: Secondary Activities follows these raw materials into factories.
• Farming in India: Land Resources and Agriculture applies these farming types to India's cropping patterns.
• Minerals in India: Mineral and Energy Resources covers mineral occurrence in India.