What are Subsistence Strategies?

Agriculture

Agriculture involves a small number of full time farming specialists producing high yields of crops using irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides as well as large beasts of burden and eventually mechanized equipment. Agriculture supports a large, sedentary population far beyond the normal carry capacity of land when any other subsistence strategies are used. The earliest agriculturalist societies appeared in Mesoamerica, South America, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus River region and Northern China. Each of these regions domesticated a variety of plants and animals. Today, almost all societies either use agriculture, or are affected by agricultural practices.

Types of Societies Using Agriculture

There are two division of the types of societies which use agricultural techniques: non-industrialized and industrialized. Both use irrigation, fertilizers, and herbicides and pesticides. The difference lies in the use of beasts of burden such as oxen or horses to carry out heavy labor (as in non-industrialized agriculture) or the use of machinery to carry out heavy labor (as found in industrialized agriculture). Industrialized agriculture also takes place on a larger scale, supplies more food to larger populations, and uses more resources than non-industrialized agriculture.

Settlement Patterns

The emergence of agriculture permanently changed the settlement patterns of those societies that used it. First and foremost, settlements became permanent, bringing about the first appearance of urban centers. Because of high crop yields, fewer people were needed to produce the food that fed everyone in a group. This meant that there were people who had no way to make a living. In order to meet their subsistence needs, these non-food-producing members of the group became specialists in other jobs, producing goods or providing services that other people needed. These specialists didn't settle in farms but rather in urban centers that were situated near the fields that produced the food they needed to survive. Eventually, urban centers became the heart of cultural innovations, the arts and learning.

Economics

Agricultural societies are more stratified along age and gender than societies using any other subsistence strategy. Adult men occupy the highest level of status while women rank the lowest. Agricultural societies have sharp divisions between which jobs are considered for men (politics, public life, food production, and warfare) and which jobs are considered for women (raising children and other domestic chores). Challenges to this order are often met with strict and sometimes deadly responses.

Societies which practice agriculture use a range of different food production patterns to meet the needs of the group. These patterns include: foraging, ranching, peasant farming, plantation agriculture and large-scale mechanized grain farming.

Foraging exists in many agriculturalist societies such as the United States in the form of fishing (aquatic foraging). Even though the methods, intensity and motivation (to make money) behind fishing changes in agriculturalist societies, the basic practices remain the same. People go out and catch fish.

Ranching is another food production practice used in intensive agriculturalist societies. Modern day ranching, confined mostly to regions where Europeans migrated, has its origins in medieval pastoralism. Ranching involves raising a single type of animal, such as cattle or sheep, on land that is unsuitable for agriculture. These animals are bred for sale on domestic and international markets.

Peasant farming is the most common form of farming in the world. Peasants are farmers who work on a family owned farm. The farm furnishes most of the family's food needs while leaving a surplus that can be sold in local markets or foreign markets. Peasants typically have the lowest level of social status in the societies in which they live despite the fact that they serve as the primary food producers for the urban centers and the elite.

Plantation agriculture, another of the food producing patterns found in societies which use an agriculture subsistence strategy, is a labor intensive method of farming requiring a large labor force. Plantations produce cash crops, crops that are raised for the explicit purpose of export, such as sugar cane or coffee. The income generated from these exports is used to pay for huge operation costs. Plantations are mostly found in the tropics and subtropics and are mostly owned by large multinational corporations. These plantations displace local peoples and take advantage of the displacement by providing low wages to people who no longer have a way to make a living.

Large-scale mechanized grain farming is a capital intensive form of farming requiring an large amount of investment money to pay for fertilizers and machinery. Large-scale mechanized grain farming focuses on raising one or two crops, such as wheat, rice or corn, for the explicit purpose of export. Because this food production pattern uses heavy machinery to perform most of the labor, few workers are needed. Large-scale mechanized grain farming didn't emerge until after the Industrial Revolution. Today, countries like the United States and Russia use mechanize grain farming to meet most of their own food needs as well as to produce export goods.

Diet

People who practice intensive agriculture eat some form of a grain, such as wheat, rice, barley, buckwheat or corn, as their primary food source. This diet is augmented by animals such as cattle, chickens and pigs, and fruits and vegetables. Because of advances in food preservations techniques such as refrigeration, today people are able to eat not only local foods but also imported foods from the other side of the globe. This is a luxury that people using other subsistence strategies don't have.

Social Organization

Before agriculture, societies were small and isolated. Agriculture made the emergence of large-scale societies possible. Large-scale societies are characterized by the presence of specialists who do not produce food, internal and external trade for goods needed for subsistence, increased inequalities in status and wealth, and an intensification of resource use.

Agricultural societies are complex, and inequalities in status and wealth increase the more complex they get. At the top levels of power in an agricultural society are the ruling elite who maintain law and order within a territory. Their power is sanctioned in a variety of ways, from divine rule to accumulated wealth to popular election. At the bottom levels of power are the food-producing people. Everyone else is positioned somewhere between these two extremes. In some societies, foreigners and people who perform jobs that are considered especially dirty or sacrilegious, are essentially outside of this power structure and are generally considered non-humans.

Order is maintained by a code of laws and judicial system that enforces laws and punishes those who break them. The one-on-one interaction and dispute mediation found in foraging societies is replaced by third-party mediation conducted by specialists. In extreme examples, such as in the United States, the code of laws replaces internalized morals and people act based on their risks of getting caught rather than a sense of right or wrong.

Warfare carried out by agricultural societies is far different from any form of conflict carried out by societies which practice other subsistence strategies. While wars of conquest are uncommon except among highly mobile pastoralists, wars of conquest are common among agricultural societies. These wars are typically fought over territory or resources that one society or another claims. Wars are also fought on increasingly larger scale as societies become larger, more complex and more technologically advanced. Agricultural societies have soldiers, specialists whose job is to fight. With the exception of some aggressive pastoralists, no other societies have these sorts of specialists. The amount of resources needed to wage war also increases. Today, warfare is a complex matter involving the mobilization of machines and men on a scale never before seen.

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