Subsistence farming

Like most farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, this Cameroonian man cultivates at the subsistence level.

Subsistence farming is a mode of horticulture in which a plot of land produces only enough food to feed the family working it. Depending on climate, soil conditions, agricultural practices and the crop grown, it generally requires between 1,000 and 40,000 m² (0.25 and 10 acres) per person.

Subsistence farming, by definition, produces only enough food to sustain the farmers through their normal daily activities. It is a harsh way of living. Good weather may occasionally allow them to produce a surplus for sale or barter, but surpluses are rare. Because surpluses are rare, subsistence farming does not allow for growth, the accumulation of capital or even for much specialization of labor. The farming family is left almost entirely without implements or goods that it cannot produce by itself.

History

Subsistence agriculture is agriculture carried out for survival — with few or no crops available for sale. It is usually organic, simply for lack of money to buy industrial inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides and genetically modified seeds. It is however not always sustainable agriculture, as such techniques as slash and burn agriculture are common for instance in rainforest regions.

Historically most farmers were engaged in these practices for subsistence, and this is still the case in the poorest developing nations, where over one billion people live on under one U.S. dollar per day, and two more billion live on under five dollars a day. To half the human population on Earth, money is a minor consideration in how agriculture works, what crops are planted, and what tools and methods are used. Each region has a few traditional crops, and methods to grow those that amount to gardening on a large enough scale to feed one family or extended family.

Cash crops are never the motive of subsistence agriculture, although excess of traditional crops can often be sold in towns, or, more likely rare foodstuffs can be gathered in the wild and sold. The bushmeat trade is such a sideline — hunting of wild animals to feed the cities.

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has argued that one obstacle to industrial development is that subsistence farmers can not convert their work into capital which can be used to start new businesses and trigger industrializations. He argues that these obstacles exist often because subsistence farmers do not have clear title to the land which they work and to the crops which they produce.

Contributing factors

In the absence of technology, the area of land that a farmer can cultivate each season is limited by factors such as available tools and the quality of the soil. If this land will not produce a surplus, due to the fertility of the soil, climate conditions, tools and techniques, or available crop types, the farmer can do no more than subsist on it.

In the absence of a well developed commercialized agricultural sector, with monetary demands on the producer, such as taxes, any given agricultural producer has relatively little incentive to move beyond subsistence farming. Expending effort to produce surplusses generates very little benefit, so the extra effort is usually wasted. Unfortunately, under these conditions years with poor harvests often result in food scarcety and famine.

Not all farmers have access to as much land as they can cultivate. Socioeconomic conditions may prevent an expansion of farming plots. If inheritance traditions require that a plot be split among the owner's children upon his death, plot sizes can steadily decrease.

Mitigation tactics

Many techniques have been attempted (with varying degrees of success) to help subsistence farmers to produce surpluses so the community can begin the path to economic growth.

Food aid can alleviate a short famine, but does nothing to solve the inherent problem of subsistence production. It is no longer considered a long-term solution.

Education about modern agricultural techniques has had some limited success, but not as much as was originally hoped. Many instructors discovered that their techniques depended on infrastructure, climate or resources which are not available in the subsistence community.

Another approach to education has been to provide the farmers with non-agricultural marketable skills. The implicit assumption is that the subsistence farmer will leave the community to seek employment in an area where greater resources are available. This technique has met with marginal success because it often ignores the human desire to stay with community.

In recent years, some attention has been given to developing underutilized crops, particularly in Africa and South-East Asia.

Proper irrigation techniques can dramatically improve the output of farmland. Traditional irrigation methods can be extremely labor-intensive, wasteful of water, and may require community-wide infrastructure which is difficult to implement. There are new types of irrigation equipment available which are both inexpensive and water-efficient. Many subsistence farmers, however, remain unaware of the new technologies, are unable to afford them, or have difficulties marketing their crops after investing in irrigation equipment.

Genetically modified crops (ex. golden rice) can have higher nutrient content or disease resistance than natural varieties. This technique has been highly successful in some parts of the world, though the long-term ecological and epidemiological effects of these crops are poorly understood.

Microloans, loans of very small sums of money (often less than $25), can enable farmers to purchase equipment or draft animals. Alternatively, microloans can enable farmers to find non-agricultural occupations in their communities.

Subsistence farming exists nowadays in Batswana, Benin, Bolivia, Congo, Guinea, Kikuyu, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Polynesia, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Vietnam and multiple other countries.

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