What are Subsistence Strategies?

Horticulture

Horticulture is small-scale farming in which people use simple tools to raise domesticated plants in a garden and tend to small domesticated animals, such as pigs or chickens used for both food and prestige. Horticulture emerged around 10 K.Y.A. Today, horticulture is practiced in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Africa. Examples of horticulturists are the Yanomamo of South America and the Tsembaga of highland New Guinea.

Settlement Patterns

Horticulturist population densities range from 1-10 people per square mile and are generally found in tropical areas. They live in semi-permanent settlements of between thirty to several hundred persons. Because of the farming techniques used by horticulturists (see the Diet section), soil nutrients are rapidly depleted. As the fields in one area are no longer able to support crop production, the group moves to another area within a home territory. Horticulturists groups often have several sites they return to over a period of years within their home territory.

Economics

Age and sex determine the activities a person is responsible for, with men afforded higher prestige than women. Woman are generally responsible for most agricultural work, domestic chores, and food preparation and distribution. Men are generally responsible for hunting, heavy labor tasks related to agriculture, and village business, such as negotiations with outside communities.

Families work together to support their own subsistence needs as well as work communally to support the needs of their village. Communal activities include clearing fields, building homes and hunting.

Diet

Horticulturists draw their diets from their gardens, domesticated animals and limited foraging. Food sharing is a common practice, and the consumption of domesticated animals is often a special event; cause for celebration.

Horticulturists plant their crops on small fields (gardens) using simple tools such as sticks and hoes. They prepare a field using slash-and-burn techniques. First, they cut down the natural vegetation of a field. They then burn the vegetation, leaving the potash as a fertilizer, and plant their crops in this burned area. A field remains in use until its soil nutrients are depleted, at which time a new field is cleared and planted. The old field is left fallow. The fallow period gives the natural growth a chance to return to the field, which in turn builds up soil nutrients. Once natural growth has returned, it is cleared and burned again. This technique of shifting from one field to another is known as shifting cultivation (or shifting agriculture).

Horticulturists plant a variety of crops in a single field. This is known as intercropping. The variety of vegetation protects the soil from erosion. Once a field is planted, little else is done with it. The crops are pretty much left to grow on their own. Aside from the potash, horticulturists don't use any fertilizers. They don't use pesticides, herbicides, or irrigation of any kind.

Social Organization

Horticulturists arrange their social organization around kinship ties in much the same way pastoralists and foragers do. Kinship ties determine where a person lives and which lands they have access to.

Horticulturists carry out periodic raids on their neighbors in order to attain valuable resources, women and children, or avenge a wrong (or a perceived wrong).

Horticulturists possess a few more material goods than foragers or pastoralists. Status is determined by the exchange of services and food goods such as live stock. In the case of the Tsembaga celebrations in which pigs are eaten affords status to the person throwing the party.

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