Understanding the Primary Sector: Agriculture, Livestock, and Forestry
The primary sector includes activities devoted to agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry, and the exploitation of mining resources. Key trends in the sector include a decrease in the active population. The active population engaged in this activity is aging, and working conditions are often challenging.
Agriculture
Extensive agriculture, common in America, focuses on high yields cultivated in large tracts with low labor input, such as U.S. grain agriculture. Plantation agriculture relies on technology and cheap labor to achieve high productivity. Agriculture for self-sufficiency can be itinerant or sedentary, often employing traditional techniques.
Intensive irrigated agriculture is practiced in river valleys like the Nile in Africa. Traditional livestock and transhumant practices are found in very dry areas but are declining. Agriculture and livestock in the Atlantic region of Europe are usually practiced on family farms. Traditional Mediterranean agriculture focuses on olive products, wheat, and sheep herds. Extensive agriculture in Asia often suffers from low performance due to the use of outdated machinery.
Types of Agriculture
- Riciculture (Monsoon Rice Farming): Rice farmers face technical underdevelopment and labor challenges.
- Traditional Agriculture: Includes shifting cultivation or self-sufficient tropical agriculture, which relies on burning vegetation for fertilization. This system quickly depletes soils, requiring relocation after 5-6 years.
- Extensive Rainfed Cropland Agriculture: Land is divided into parcels with fallow periods. Livestock provides manure and assists in plowing. Major products include cereals and legumes.
- Rice Agriculture: Thrives in monsoon climates with winter rainfall and fertile soil. Population pressures necessitate the cultivation of rice to feed large populations.
- Intensive Agriculture: Maximizes land use with a large workforce, often involving 2-3 annual harvests and meticulous labor using traditional techniques.
- Technified Monoculture Plantation Agriculture: Dedicated to tropical products for exploitation by developed countries where climatic conditions do not permit plantation growth. These plantations often cover huge tracts of land and are labor-intensive.
Extensive wheat farming utilizes technology for high performance and regular plots, allowing for high productivity with minimal labor. Commodities produced include cereals like wheat and corn. Atlantic agriculture on the European Atlantic slope achieves high productivity through modern genetic engineering technologies. Modern Mediterranean agriculture in Mediterranean rim countries uses both rainfed and irrigated systems. Modern irrigation systems have enabled large-scale hydroponic cultivation.
Livestock Breeding
Traditional extensive breeding is practiced in areas with extreme climates where farming is impossible, such as very dry regions in Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, or very cold regions like the northern edge of Europe. It also occurs in abundant grasslands like the plains of Argentina’s Pampa or the U.S. This type of farming requires frequent relocation of animals for food and water.
Modern intensive livestock breeding achieves high yields using advanced technology and substantial investment. Livestock farms are large and modern, with advanced feeding systems, enabling them to be competitive in the market by lowering costs and offering competitive prices.
Forestry
Forestry, or the exploitation and care of forests, is important because forests offer valuable resources, the most important of which is wood. Major producers include the USA, Scandinavia, and Russia. Other forest resources include resin and cork. Forests are important for regulating the environment because they favor climate, produce oxygen, and rainfall, and are the habitat of many living things. Deforestation, or forest loss, is being addressed through forest cultivation efforts.
Fishing
Types of fishing:
- Craft fishing is done near shore, providing traditional fish for consumption or local markets.
- Fishing industry aims to obtain a large number of catches to supply increasingly large markets.
Fishing Categories
- Inshore fishing: Near shore boats provide fresh fish for auctions.
- Deep sea fishing: Utilizes large sea boats with advanced technology like GPS and sonar, often including onboard processing factories for extended fishing trips.
Problems in the Fishing Industry
Key problems include landfill in the sea, mainly from industrial and municipal sources, and the depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing or overexploitation. In the mid-twentieth century, jurisdictional waters were recognized as extending 200 miles from the coast, granting coastal countries the rights to exploit resources within this zone.