Forest Resources and Agriculture: Types and Importance
Forest Resources and Their Importance
The Portuguese expanded beyond the Treaty of Tordesillas, primarily in America. While the Spanish focused on acquiring precious metals in Potosi, the Portuguese initially found little and spent much of their colonization searching for them. They expanded their territory, but without finding significant metal deposits.
Forest resources are generally considered renewable, but constant and often irreversible deforestation is a significant concern.
Intensive exploitation of forests is a root cause of natural disasters in some countries.
The value of forest resources lies not only in raw material production but also in their essential role in maintaining the natural ecosystem. Life as we know it could not exist without them.
It is common to differentiate between tropical and temperate forests. Tropical forests cover approximately 1,760 million hectares, while temperate forests cover 1,640 million hectares.
In developing countries, forest areas exceed 1,000 million hectares, with 15 to 20 million hectares being consumed annually. This deforestation primarily affects rainforests, which are of fundamental importance.
The main functions of forest resources can be grouped into protective, regulatory, and productive at the ecosystem level, adding economic value.
Agriculture: Cultivating the Land
Agriculture encompasses the skills and expertise involved in cultivating the land. It includes various soil treatment methods and vegetable cultivation. It represents a range of human actions that transform the natural environment to make it more suitable for growing crops.
The activities that make up the agricultural sector are based on the exploitation of land resources, aided by human action. This includes food plants like cereals, fruits, vegetables, pastures, cultivated fodder, fibers for the textile industry, and energy crops.
Agriculture is of great strategic importance as the foundation for self-development and national wealth.
The science that studies the practice of agriculture is agronomy.
Types of Agriculture
Agriculture can be classified based on various criteria:
According to Water Dependence:
- Rainfed: Farming relies solely on rain and groundwater, without any additional water application by the farmer.
- Irrigation: Farming involves water input from the farmer through supply channels, captured from natural or artificial surfaces, or extracted from groundwater wells.
According to Production Scale and Market Relationship:
- Subsistence Farming: Production focuses on meeting the farmer’s and their family’s needs, with minimal surplus for the market. The technical level is primitive.
- Industrial Agriculture: Large quantities are produced using expensive means of production and marketed for surplus. This is typical of industrialized countries, developing countries, and the internationalized sector of the poorest countries. The technical level is technologically advanced and also defined as market agriculture.
According to Performance and Resource Use:
- Intensive Agriculture: Aims for maximum production in a small space, leading to greater site wear. This is typical of industrialized countries.
- Extensive Agriculture: Relies on a larger surface area, causing less pressure on the environment and ecological relationships, although business profits are generally smaller.
According to Method and Objectives:
- Traditional Agriculture: Uses typical systems shaped by the culture over prolonged periods.
- Industrial Agriculture: Primarily based on intensive systems, focused on producing large quantities of food in less time and space, but with greater environmental impact, designed for large commercial benefits.
- Organic Farming: Creates production systems that respect the ecological character of sites and soil, trying to respect the seasons and the natural distributions of plant species, fostering soil fertility.
- Natural Agriculture.