Jhuming in north-eastern India, milpa in Central America and Mexico, and ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia are local names for:

Intensive subsistence agriculture

Viticulture, or grape cultivation, is a speciality of which type of agriculture?

Extensive commercial grain cultivation

Intensive subsistence agriculture

Which of the following is a characteristic of extensive commercial grain cultivation?

Large mechanised farms with low yield per acre but high yield per person

Small family holdings worked intensively, giving very high yields per acre

Large mechanised farms with low yield per acre but high yield per person

Wet paddy as the dominant crop of densely populated monsoon lands

Crops and livestock raised together on farms close to large cities

The Kolkhoz is an example of:

Collective farming in the former Soviet Union

Co-operative farming in Denmark

Plantation agriculture in West Africa

Commercial ranching in Argentina

Collective farming in the former Soviet Union

Assertion (A): Dairy farming is usually practised near urban and industrial centres. Reason (R): Fresh milk is perishable, and its main market is the large urban population.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Primary Activities — Gathering, Pastoralism, Agriculture and Mining

Primary activities depend directly on the environment: they use the earth’s resources — land, water, vegetation, building materials and minerals — as they are found. Hunting and gathering, pastoral activities, fishing, forestry, agriculture, and mining and quarrying are all primary. Because much of this work is done outdoors, people engaged in it are called red-collar workers. The paper asks this chapter as recognition: a description of a farming system and its name, a region and the activity it is known for, or a local name for shifting cultivation.

Hunting, Gathering and Pastoralism

Gathering is practised where the climate is harsh — in high latitudes (northern Canada, northern Eurasia, southern Chile) and in low latitudes (the Amazon basin, tropical Africa, the northern fringe of Australia and the interior of South-East Asia). It needs little capital and low technology and yields no surplus. Some gathering has become commercial: barks yield quinine and tannin, and tree trunks yield rubber, balata, gums and resins. The milky juice of the zapota tree gives chicle, the base of chewing gum.

Two kinds of pastoralism
Feature	Nomadic herding	Commercial livestock rearing (ranching)
Purpose	Subsistence — herders depend on animals for food, clothing, shelter, tools and transport	Commercial — meat, wool, hides and skin are processed and exported
Movement	Herders move with their animals in search of pasture and water	Settled; large ranches divided into parcels, grazing rotated by fencing
Organisation	Each group occupies a well-defined territory by tradition	Scientific: breeding, genetic improvement, disease control, health care; usually one type of animal
Regions	The core belt from the Atlantic shores of North Africa east across the Arabian peninsula into Mongolia and Central China; the Eurasian tundra; south-west Africa and Madagascar	New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay and the USA

ℹ️ Transhumance — moving with the seasons

Transhumance is the seasonal movement of herders and their animals between pastures. In mountain regions herders move to higher pastures in summer and back to lower areas in winter. In the Himalayas the Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis and Bhotiyas migrate this way; in the tundra the movement is from south to north in summer and back in winter.

Types of Agriculture

Each system with its features and the regions the book names
System	Features	Regions / names
Primitive subsistence (shifting cultivation)	Vegetation cleared by fire ("slash and burn"); ashes add to fertility; plots small, tools primitive; land abandoned when fertility falls, and the cycle of fallow shortens as population grows	Jhuming in north-eastern India, milpa in Central America and Mexico, ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia
Intensive subsistence	Small holdings, family labour, intensive use of land with little machinery; high output per unit of land but low per worker. Wet-paddy dominated, or non-paddy dominated where relief, climate or soil do not suit rice	Densely populated monsoon regions of south, south-east and east Asia
Plantation	Introduced by Europeans in their tropical colonies; large estates, heavy capital, scientific methods, managerial skill, cheap labour, single-crop specialisation, good transport to factories and ports	French cocoa and coffee in West Africa; British tea in India and Sri Lanka, rubber in Malaysia, sugarcane and bananas in the West Indies; coffee fazendas in Brazil
Extensive commercial grain cultivation	Interior semi-arid mid-latitudes; wheat the main crop; very large, highly mechanised farms; low yield per acre but high yield per person	Eurasian Steppes, Canadian and American Prairies, the Pampas of Argentina, the Velds of South Africa, the Australian Downs, the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand
Mixed farming	Crops and livestock on the same farm; crop rotation and intercropping keep soil fertile; high capital spending on machinery and buildings, and on fertilisers	Highly developed parts of the world: north-western Europe, eastern North America, parts of Eurasia, temperate southern continents
Dairy farming	The most advanced and efficient rearing of milch animals; capital- and labour-intensive; located near urban and industrial centres, which are the market for fresh milk	North-western Europe, Canada, north-eastern USA; south-eastern Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania
Mediterranean agriculture	Highly specialised commercial farming; viticulture (grape cultivation) is the speciality; citrus fruits supplied to world markets	Lands around the Mediterranean, southern California, central Chile, south-western South Africa, south and south-western Australia
Market gardening and horticulture	High-value crops — vegetables, fruit, flowers — for urban markets on small, well-connected farms. Truck farming: vegetables only, grown within the distance a truck covers overnight. Factory farming: stall-fed livestock, especially poultry and cattle	North-western Europe (the Netherlands specialises in flowers, especially tulips), north-eastern USA, the Mediterranean

Two forms are defined by ownership rather than crops. In co-operative farming farmers voluntarily pool their resources to farm more profitably; it has been most successful in Denmark, and is common in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Italy. Collective farming rests on social ownership of the means of production and collective labour; the Kolkhoz of the former Soviet Union is the example.

⚠️ Intensive and extensive measure different things

"High yield" needs a denominator. Intensive subsistence farming gets high output per unit of land with much labour; extensive grain farming gets high output per person from huge mechanised farms but low output per acre. An option that gives extensive farming "high yield per acre" has swapped the two.

Mining

Physical factors affecting the profitability of mining: the size, grade and mode of occurrence of the deposits.
Economic factors: demand for the mineral, technology available, capital to develop infrastructure, and the cost of labour and transport.
Surface (open-cast) mining is the easiest and cheapest way to extract minerals that lie close to the surface; safety costs and equipment are relatively low and output is large and rapid.
Underground (shaft) mining is needed when the ore lies deep: vertical shafts are sunk and underground galleries radiate from them. It needs lifts, drills, haulage and ventilation, and is risky — poisonous gases, fires, floods and caving in.
Developed economies are retreating from mining, processing and refining because of high labour costs, while many developing countries depend on mineral exports for a large share of their earnings.

Key takeaways

Primary activities use the earth’s resources directly; their workers are red-collar workers.
Nomadic herding is subsistence and mobile; ranching is commercial, settled and scientific.
Transhumance: seasonal movement — up to mountain pastures in summer, down in winter (Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis, Bhotiyas).
Shifting cultivation: jhuming (NE India), milpa (Central America, Mexico), ladang (Indonesia, Malaysia).
Extensive grain farming: Steppes, Prairies, Pampas, Velds, Downs, Canterbury — high yield per person, low per acre.
Viticulture marks Mediterranean agriculture; dairy farming sits near cities; truck farming grows vegetables within an overnight drive.
Co-operative farming succeeded most in Denmark; collective farming is the Kolkhoz of the former USSR.
Open-cast mining is cheapest for shallow deposits; shaft mining reaches deep ore at greater cost and risk.

Practice questions (8)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Jhuming in north-eastern India, milpa in Central America and Mexico, and ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia are local names for:
1. Mixed farming
2. Plantation agriculture
3. Shifting cultivation
4. Intensive subsistence agriculture
Show answer
Answer: C — Shifting cultivation
All three are names for shifting cultivation — primitive subsistence farming in which a patch of forest is cleared by slash and burn, cropped for a few years and abandoned when its fertility falls. Intensive subsistence farming uses the same land continuously, plantations are large single-crop estates, and mixed farming combines crops and livestock in developed regions.
Viticulture, or grape cultivation, is a speciality of which type of agriculture?
1. Mediterranean agriculture
2. Dairy farming
3. Extensive commercial grain cultivation
4. Intensive subsistence agriculture
Show answer
Answer: A — Mediterranean agriculture
Viticulture is the speciality of Mediterranean agriculture, the highly specialised commercial farming of the lands around the Mediterranean and of regions with a similar climate such as central Chile and southern California. Extensive grain farming specialises in wheat, dairy farming in milk, and intensive subsistence farming in rice or other staple food crops.
Gaddi herders take their flocks up to high mountain pastures in summer and bring them down to lower valleys in winter. This seasonal movement is called:
1. Ranching
2. Shifting cultivation
3. Truck farming
4. Transhumance
Show answer
Answer: D — Transhumance
Transhumance is the seasonal movement of herders and animals between pastures — upward in summer and downward in winter in mountain regions, as practised by the Gaddis, Gujjars, Bakarwals and Bhotiyas in the Himalayas. Ranching is settled commercial livestock rearing on fenced land, and shifting cultivation and truck farming are forms of crop farming, not herding.
Which of the following is a characteristic of extensive commercial grain cultivation?
1. Small family holdings worked intensively, giving very high yields per acre
2. Large mechanised farms with low yield per acre but high yield per person
3. Wet paddy as the dominant crop of densely populated monsoon lands
4. Crops and livestock raised together on farms close to large cities
Show answer
Answer: B — Large mechanised farms with low yield per acre but high yield per person
Extensive grain farming in the semi-arid interiors of the mid-latitudes uses very large, highly mechanised farms, so output per acre is low but output per person is high. Small intensive holdings with high yield per acre and wet paddy describe intensive subsistence farming of monsoon Asia, and crops with livestock describe mixed farming.
Match List-I (grassland region of extensive grain farming) with List-II (where it lies):
List-I: A. Prairies B. Pampas C. Velds D. Downs
List-II: I. Argentina II. Australia III. North America IV. South Africa
1. A-III, B-IV, C-I, D-II
2. A-III, B-I, C-IV, D-II
3. A-I, B-III, C-IV, D-II
4. A-III, B-I, C-II, D-IV
Show answer
Answer: B — A-III, B-I, C-IV, D-II
The Prairies are in Canada and the USA, the Pampas in Argentina, the Velds in South Africa and the Downs in Australia. One wrong code swaps the Pampas and the Velds, another the Velds and the Downs — both southern-hemisphere grasslands, which is exactly why they get confused.
The Kolkhoz is an example of:
1. Co-operative farming in Denmark
2. Plantation agriculture in West Africa
3. Commercial ranching in Argentina
4. Collective farming in the former Soviet Union
Show answer
Answer: D — Collective farming in the former Soviet Union
The Kolkhoz was the collective farm of the former Soviet Union, based on social ownership of the means of production and collective labour. Co-operative farming, most successful in Denmark, keeps private ownership and pools resources voluntarily — the distinction the paper tests — while plantations and ranching are commercial forms unconnected with collective ownership.
Assertion (A): Dairy farming is usually practised near urban and industrial centres.
Reason (R): Fresh milk is perishable, and its main market is the large urban population.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Dairy farms cluster around cities precisely because milk spoils quickly and the city is where it is sold; refrigeration and pasteurisation have extended the distance, but the logic of nearness to market remains. Both statements are true and the second is the reason for the first, so this is not a case of two unrelated true statements.
Consider the following statements about mining:
A. The size, grade and mode of occurrence of a deposit are physical factors in the profitability of mining.
B. Open-cast mining is the cheapest way of extracting minerals that lie close to the surface.
C. Underground shaft mining is preferred when the ore lies close to the surface.
D. Developed economies are expanding mining because their labour costs are low.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
1. A, B and C only
2. B, C and D only
3. A and B only
4. A and D only
Show answer
Answer: C — A and B only
A and B are true. C is false because shaft mining is the method for ore that lies deep — for shallow deposits the cheaper open-cast method is used. D is false twice over: developed economies have high labour costs and are retreating from mining, processing and refining, leaving much of it to developing countries.