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Subsistence agriculture

About: Subsistence agriculture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8069 publications have been published within this topic receiving 156876 citations. The topic is also known as: subsistence farming.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the case of early (ca. 12,000-10,000 B.P.) Paleoindian groups in the Americas, the availability of neighboring groups with a detailed knowledge of local resource geography could not be relied upon as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Hunter-gatherer adaptations to long-term fluctuations in regional resource structure require mechanisms to cope with periodic subsistence stresses. Among documented groups, a common response to such stress is temporary movement into adjacent occupied areas-moving in with "relatives" when things go wrong. However, in the case of early (ca. 12,000-10,000 B.P.) Paleoindian groups in the Americas, the availability of neighboring groups with a detailed knowledge of local resource geography could not be relied upon. Post-Pleistocene environmental changes and the low initial population of the New World are important factors conditioning a lifeway characterized by a dependence on hunting (though not exclusively of megafauna), and by high residential, logistical, and range (territorial) mobility. Early Paleoindian groups had to adopt a subsistence technology that could be employed regardless of the specific resource microstructure. In some regards, Paleoindians seem to have behaved like tropical foragers while in others like arctic collectors. Use of high quality lithic raw materials from large quarry sources, reliance on a bifacial technology, limited use of caves and rockshelters, and a low level of processing of food products for storage all may be indicative of such a subsistence technology, which would have been unlike that of any modern hunter-gatherers.

545 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The first wave of Mexican emigration to the US lasted from 1900 to 1929 when the US economy was growing and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1919) devastated the Mexican economy.
Abstract: Economic development is associated with modernization urbanization internal rural-urban migration and international migration. Emigration is positively associated with development and aid to developing countries will increase emigration from those countries until the developing country reaches a standard of living equal to that of the developed country. Studies of European emigration to America have shown that emigration is correlated with the onset of industrialization and that emigration was highest when the home country was experiencing a depression and the US economy was in a period of upswing. The basis of society in an underdeveloped country is labor-intensive subsistence farming which provides work and sustenance to a household or community. As soon as capital is applied to agriculture the small peasant holdings are replaced by large private holdings efficiently farmed by machinery and producing surpluses that find their way to markets that is to urban areas which represent concentrations of wealth. The fabric of agricultural society is destabilized as the peasant owner becomes a hired laborer who migrates to the urban area when farms need fewer and factories more laborers. The 1st phase of migration is thus rural to urban. But development is discontinuous both in time and in space and when the displaced worker cannot find employment in the cities of his own country he emigrates to another. Transportation and communication facilities developed to facilitate industrial and commercial exchange also serve as carriers of international migration usually to the same country with which close economic links have already been established. International migration feeds on itself because earlier immigrants provide a network that makes resettlement easier cheaper and less risky for the next wave of migrants. Moreover the emigrants send money back to the home country which helps to speed up the development process in the home country until modernization and urbanization reach the point where there are no more displaced peasants to export. The experience of the United States and Mexico illustrates most phases of the emigration cycle. The 1st wave of Mexican emigration to the US lasted from 1900 to 1929 when the US economy was growing and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1919) devastated the Mexican economy. In the 1930s Mexico experienced a period of rapid growth. The 2nd wave of emigration 1942-1964 stemmed from the coincidence of drought in Mexico and wartime labor shortage in the US which was remedied by the bracero program which granted temporary visas to Mexican agricultural workers. The 3rd and current wave of emigration began in the mid-1960s. It was fueled by the Mexican governments ambitious economic reform program which was to be paid for out of oil revenues. When oil prices fell the Mexican economy suffered a crisis of inflation and debt. However the development process in Mexico is reaching the stage where there are no longer large numbers of surplus agricultural workers and Mexican emigration should diminish over the next 2 decades.

515 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use a mathematical analysis to argue that the rate-limiting process for intensijcation trajectories must generally be the rate of innovation of subsistence technology or subsistence-related social organization.
Abstract: Several independent trajectories of subsistence intensijcation, often leading to agriculture, began during the Holocene. No plant-rich intensijcations are known from the Pleistocene, even from the late Pleistocene when human populations were otherwise quite sophisticated. Recent data from ice and ocean-core climate proxies show that last glacial climates were extremely hostile to agriculture-dry, low in atmospheric CO,, and extremely variable on quite short time scales. We hypothesize that agriculture was impossible under last-glacial conditions. The quite abruptfinal amelioration of the climate was followed immediately by the beginnings of plant-intensive resource-use strategies in some areas, although the turn to plants was much later elsewhere. Almost all trajectories of subsistence intensijcation in the Holocene are progressive, and eventually agriculture became the dominant strategy in all but marginal environments. We hypothesize that, in the Holocene, agriculture was, in the long run, compulsory. We use a mathematical analysis to argue that the rate-limiting process for intensijcation trajectories must generally be the rate of innovation of subsistence technology or subsistence-related social organization. At the observed rates of innovation, population growth will always be rapid enough to sustain a high level of population pressure. Several processes appear to retard rates of cultural evolution below the maxima we observe in the most favorable cases.

484 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that even well-managed coastal fisheries will only meet the demand in 6 of 22 Pacific island countries and territories (PICTs) and propose to increase local access to tuna and develop small-pond aquaculture to provide food security.

481 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1969
TL;DR: In this paper, an important change in subsistence pattern, midway through the Upper Palaeolithic in the Near East, set the stage for domestication of plants, and a possible mechanism, a model of population pressure and disequilibrium relative to environmental carrying capacity, was described.
Abstract: This chapter discusses an important change in subsistence pattern, midway through the Upper Palaeolithic in the Near East, set the stage for domestication of plants. A basic problem in human ecology is why cultures change their modes of subsistence at all. The chapter describes, one possible mechanism, a model of population pressure and disequilibrium relative to environmental carrying capacity and draws from enthnographic data on hunting and gathering groups. It examines the equilibrium model proposed by L. R. Binford as a means of explaining post-Pleistocene changes in the archaeological record. This model will be used to offer tentative explanations for subsistence changes which took place in the Near East at the three critical points mentioned: the Upper Palaeolithic, the beginning of domestication, and the beginnings of irrigation. The chapter also describes advance for viewing the rest of South-western Asia through Iranian eyes.

475 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023534
20221,101
2021279
2020268
2019297
2018303