Question

What is subsistence agriculture?

Answer 1

Hint: The practise of producing plants and cattle is known as agriculture. Agriculture was a significant factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, as it enabled humans to live in cities by creating food surpluses from tamed species. Agriculture has a long history dating back thousands of years.

Complete answer:
On smallholdings, farmers practise subsistence agriculture, which involves growing food crops to meet the requirements of themselves and their family. Subsistence farmers produce enough food to feed themselves and their families, with little or no extra.

When a family plants only enough food to feed itself, this is known as subsistence farming or smallholder agriculture. There is rarely enough harvest to sell or trade, and any surplus is normally saved to sustain the family until the next harvest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this is the most extensively utilised technique of agricultural farming, and the bulk of the rural poor rely on it for survival. It's a strategy that appeals to rural farmers since it allows food to be produced in rural locations (at a low cost).

Agriculture for sustenance has been practised for centuries. More than half of the small farms in Pacific SIDS practise traditional subsistence agriculture. It has the advantage of being ecologically sound, with species and cultivars that are locally adapted and robust. Low productivity, on the other hand, is a negative.

 Agroecological farming practises such as fallow rotation systems, increased reliance on commercial seed, and higher chemical and resource input systems are being phased out due to a variety of challenges. These methods have resulted in financial losses and environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss and an increase of diseases and pests, particularly pests resistant to popular insecticides.

Crop failure or livestock death in subsistence agriculture puts the farmer at risk of famine. Because fixed expenses of crops sown and interest on debt exist in commercial agriculture, losing even a percentage of the harvest or receiving low prices can easily result in negative cash flow. Savings, diversification of operations, emergency borrowing, and the acquisition of hazard insurance against output risk, or any kind of forward pricing against price risk are some of the steps a farmer can take to mitigate such risk.

Note:-
Until recently, when market-based capitalism became popular, subsistence agriculture was the world's leading form of production. By the turn of the twentieth century, subsistence agriculture had all but vanished in Europe, and in North America, with the exodus of sharecroppers and tenant farmers from the American South and Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s.