Agrarian Industries: Types, Models, and Challenges

Posted on Mar 5, 2025 in Geography

Types of Agrarian Industries

Centre: A, B, C (Self-Consumption or Subsistence Farming)

Periphery: D, E

A – Proper Capitalist Farms or Agro-Industry

  • They tend to an optimal size.
  • Machining with high technical progress.
  • Paid workforce.
  • High energy, chemical, and water consumption.
  • Competitiveness based on productivity and prices.
  • Tendency to overproduction.
  • Dependence on the financial system.

Agroindustry

  • Large industrial companies.
  • Market domain: they absorb the production of small and medium farmers.
  • They cover the entire food supply.
  • High technical progress.
  • Complex internal organization → headquarters detached from the rural area.

B – Simple Commercial Exploitations

  • Farmer who owns lands, means of production, and works.
  • Smaller size of farms.
  • Low productivity.
  • Not competitive.
  • Greater dependence on industrial and financial inputs.
  • It has been maintained for political reasons.
  • They had public subsidies that are now being taken out.
  • Southern Europe, Japan.
  • Preserves local markets segments.

Current Alternatives

Transgenic culture

  • Dependent on GMO seeds.
  • Dependent on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
  • Dependent on patents.
  • Business concentrations.

Agricultural Holdings of the Periphery

D – Export-Oriented Latifundies

  • Large tracts of monoculture land for export.
  • Owned by the country’s bourgeoisie or multinationals.
  • Outward-facing agriculture → EXTRAVERTED AGRICULTURE.
  • Need for external inputs: machinery, chemicals, energy.
  • Production of raw materials or luxury foods.

E – Subsistence Holdings

  • Small farms of low productivity.
  • Linked to self-consumption.
  • Isolated from the market.

· there is no agricultural surplus to invest

· industrialization cannot be financed

  • There is no internal market.

Current Alternatives

Sustainable agriculture

  • Crop diversification, non-standardized local products, agrarian reform of the property.
  • Government intervention: credits, protection.
  • Promotion of food processing and direct marketing.

Energy Models in Capitalism

Energy model: combination of primary sources with transformation technologies and end use.

  • Coal Model (1800-1945). Steam engine and railway. Efficient but cost-effective extraction and transportation. Very polluting as it runs out.
  • Oil Model (1945-1973). Motor vehicles. Efficient and cheap to extract and transport. It runs out quickly.
  • Fossil Energy Dependent Diversification Model (since 1973). Energy efficiency is helped by the improvement, but consumption is increasing and by 80% it is dependent on fossil energy: oil, gas, and coal.

Causes of Falling Prices of Minerals Exported

  • Secrecy on the size of real reserves worldwide (high cost of studies and their membership large companies).
  • The indebtedness of the 80’s caused an increase in the production and appearance of the Dutch disease.
  • Due to the lack of industry, resources cannot be used within countries; they can only be valued by exporting them.
  • Privatization stimulates short-term extraction, due to uncertainty about the future.