Primary Sector Activities: Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, and Fishing
Primary Sector Activities
The primary sector encompasses activities involving natural resources: agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, and mining.
Physical Factors of Production
Area: Temperature (sunny and shady areas), altitude, rainfall, slope, altitudinal temperature gradient, wind exposure, adverse weather, and soil conditions.
Human Factors in Agriculture
Population growth, ownership and operation, technical and technological level, economic conditions, operating system or land tenure, agricultural policy, historical and cultural aspects.
Cultivated Area
Cultivated areas consist of parcels, the smallest unit being a basic cultivation area defined by size, shape, and boundaries:
- Size:
- Small: less than 1 hectare.
- Medium: 1 to 10 hectares.
- Large: Greater than 10 hectares.
- Shape:
- Regular: Geometric features.
- Irregular: No defined geometric shape.
- Limits:
- Closed fields: Plots separated by hedges, trees, or stone walls.
- Open fields: Not enclosed, differentiated by crop type.
Living Space
The living space is inhabited by the population, with two types:
- Dispersed settlement: Population lives in scattered houses or villages.
- Concentrated settlement: Population lives in towns with centralized services and residential functions.
Agricultural Practices
- Irrigated agriculture: Provides large amounts of water to crops.
- Rainfed agriculture: Relies solely on rainfall for water.
- Monoculture: Cultivating a single plant species in an area.
- Polyculture: Cultivating different plant species in the same area.
- Intensive agriculture: Maximizes yield through capital investment and/or labor.
- High-productivity intensive agriculture: High yields with minimal labor due to capital investment.
- Low-productivity intensive agriculture: Employs a large labor force with limited capital investment.
- Extensive agriculture: Does not maximize yield by using all available resources.
- High-productivity extensive agriculture: Uses modern technology and large farms for high yields.
- Low-productivity extensive agriculture: Uses rudimentary techniques with limited results.
Subsistence Agriculture
- Slash-and-burn agriculture: Clearing land by burning vegetation.
- Intensive monsoon agriculture (Asia): Rice cultivation in small plots with levees and canals supplied by floodwater.
Market Agriculture
- Modern agriculture (Europe): Flowers, Dutch horticultural products, and grains from Germany and the Paris Basin.
- Mediterranean agriculture:
- Rainfed: Wheat, vines, and olive trees (extensive).
- Irrigated: Horticultural crops.
- Extensive agriculture (new countries): Large areas with abundant machinery and scarce labor.
- Plantation agriculture: Extensive monoculture holdings (cocoa, tea, coffee) owned by large companies.
Livestock
- Livestock farming: Low capital investment and low productivity.
- Intensive livestock production: High capital investment and high productivity.
- Non-stabled livestock: Animals graze outdoors on natural pastures.
- Stabled livestock: Animals are kept in barns and fed artificially.
- Maremma livestock: A mixed system of intensive farming.
- Nomadic cattle: Pastoralists and herds move in search of native grasses.
- Seasonal nomadic livestock: Herders move livestock between winter and summer pastures.
- Sedentary livestock: Cattle are provided with food and do not need to move.
Forestry
Forestry involves cultivating forests and mountains for various products while ensuring regeneration and conservation.
Changes in Rural Areas
Demographic change, transformation of agricultural landscapes, development of new activities (industrial and tourism), and constructive changes.
Fishing
Fishing can be categorized by:
- Slaughter Location:
- Inshore fishing: Along the coast.
- Offshore fishing: Several weeks at sea.
- Deep-sea fishing: Several months at sea.
- Depth:
- Fishing area: Not exceeding 200 meters.
- Bottom fishing: Reaching depths of 600-700 meters.
- Gear Mobility:
- Gears: Mobile, not anchored.
- Fixed gear: Stationary.