Wet paddy dominated intensive subsistence agriculture
Topic: Primary Activities: Gathering, Pastoralism, Agriculture and Mining · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Primary Activities"
Meaning
This is a type of intensive subsistence agriculture in which rice is the main crop. It is found in the crowded, rainy lands of monsoon Asia. Holdings (the farm plots each family owns) are very small. Family labour and hand work take the place of machines, and farmyard manure keeps the soil fertile. Because the land is used so intensively, yield per hectare is high. But so many people work on each plot that output per worker is low.
Example
In the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta of West Bengal, families transplant and harvest paddy by hand on tiny flooded fields, often growing more than one rice crop a year.
Don't confuse with
- Intensive subsistence agriculture dominated by non-paddy crops: this is found where relief, climate or soil do not suit paddy. Wheat, millets, soybean, barley or sorghum are grown instead, as in the western Indo-Gangetic plains or North China.
- Extensive commercial grain cultivation: here it is the other way round, with low yield per hectare and high output per worker.
Related concepts
- Subsistence agriculture
- Jhum cycle
- Names of shifting cultivation worldwide
- Intensive subsistence agriculture
- Intensive subsistence agriculture dominated by non-paddy crops
- Major rice exporters