Answer: Intensive subsistence agriculture is farming on small holdings with heavy use of labour, mainly to feed the farmer’s family, practised in the densely populated monsoon lands of Asia.
Areas: India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and other monsoon regions of South and South-East Asia.
Types:
- Dominated by wet paddy: in areas of heavy rainfall and river deltas and plains, where rice is the main crop.
- Dominated by crops other than paddy: in areas of less rainfall, crops like wheat, jowar, bajra, maize, pulses and oilseeds are grown.
Characteristics:
- Land holdings are very small and fragmented due to high population density and subdivision of land.
- Farmers use their family labour; agriculture is labour-intensive with little use of machines.
- Land is used intensively: two or three crops are taken in a year (multiple cropping) and land is rarely left fallow.
- Use of animal power, manure, fertilisers, high yielding seeds and irrigation to get high yield per hectare.
- Per hectare productivity is high, but productivity per worker is low.
- Most of the produce is consumed by the farmer’s family; only a small surplus is sold in the market.
- Terraced fields are made on hill slopes to grow crops.
- Food crops dominate; along with them vegetables, fruits and cash crops are grown in some areas.
Problems: small holdings, dependence on monsoon, poverty and lack of capital, indebtedness, and disguised unemployment.
Conclusion: This type of agriculture supports a very large population; with better irrigation, credit and technology it is slowly becoming more commercial.
