4.1 What Are Primary Activities?

Every economy stands on a foundation of activities that transform nature itself into the food, fibre, fuel and raw material that secondary and tertiary activities later refine, assemble and trade. These foundational activities are called primary activities^?. They are directly dependent on the environment because they involve the harvesting or extraction of the earth's resources — land, water, vegetation, building materials and minerals — with little or no transformation. Hunting and gathering, pastoral activities, fishing, forestry, agriculture, and mining and quarrying all belong here.

People engaged in primary activities are nick-named red-collar workers^? because the bulk of their work is done outdoors — under the sun, the rain and the wind. The colour signals exposure to the elements, in contrast to the indoor "blue-collar" factory worker, the office "white-collar" worker, or the laboratory "grey-collar" technician. Across the world, the share of red-collar workers in the labour force tends to be high in developing countries and very low in advanced industrial economies.

SVG — The Primary Activities Tree

Figure 4.1: A schematic tree of the primary sector. Plantation farming sits as a sub-branch of agriculture but is treated separately because of its colonial origin and large estate scale.

4.2 Hunting and Gathering — The Oldest Economy

The earliest human beings depended on their immediate environment for survival. They subsisted on (a) animals they hunted and (b) edible plants they gathered from the surrounding forests. Primitive societies relied on wild animals, and people in very cold or extremely hot climates hunted as a way of life. The early hunters used primitive tools made of stones, twigs and arrows, so the number of animals killed was small. Today, people in coastal areas still catch fish, although fishing has been thoroughly modernised by technology.

The downside of unregulated hunting has been brutal. Many species have become extinct or endangered due to illegal hunting (poaching). India banned hunting decades ago precisely to protect its tigers, rhinoceroses, elephants, blackbuck and many bird species from this fate. Gathering and hunting are the oldest economic activity known, and they are still practised — though at very different levels and orientations across the globe.

Where Is Subsistence Gathering Still Practised?

Gathering is practised in regions of harsh climatic conditions. It often involves primitive societies who extract both plants and animals to satisfy needs for food, shelter and clothing. The activity requires very little capital and operates at a very low level of technology. Yield per person is low and little or no surplus is produced.

Figure 4.2: Areas of subsistence gathering — high-latitude zones (northern Canada, northern Eurasia, southern Chile) and low-latitude zones (Amazon Basin, tropical Africa, the northern fringe of Australia, the interior of Southeast Asia).

Modern, Market-Oriented Gathering

In modern times some gathering has become market-oriented and even commercial. Gatherers collect valuable plants — leaves, barks of trees and medicinal herbs — and after simple processing sell them in the market. Different parts of the plant are turned into a remarkable range of products:

• Bark — the source of quinine, tannin extract and cork.
• Leaves — used for beverages, drugs, cosmetics, fibres, thatch and fabrics.
• Nuts — eaten as food and crushed for oils.
• Tree trunks — yield rubber, balata, gums and resins.

Gathering, however, has little chance of becoming important at the global level. Its products cannot compete in the world market, and synthetic substitutes — often of better quality and at lower prices — have replaced many of the items once supplied by gatherers in tropical forests.

4.3 Pastoralism

At some stage in history, with the realisation that hunting was an unsustainable activity, human beings began to domesticate animals. People in different climatic conditions selected and tamed the animals around them. Depending on geographical factors and technological development, animal rearing today is practised either at the subsistence level (nomadic herding) or at the commercial level (livestock ranching).

A. Nomadic Herding — Pastoral Nomadism

Nomadic herding^?, also called pastoral nomadism, is a primitive subsistence activity in which herders rely on animals for food, clothing, shelter, tools and transport. They move from place to place along with their livestock, depending on the amount and quality of pastures and water. Each nomadic community occupies a well-identified territory by tradition.

A wide variety of animals is reared in different regions:

SVG — The Three Pastoral Nomadism Belts of the World

Figure 4.3: Three belts of pastoral nomadism. The core stretches from the Atlantic shores of North Africa eastwards across the Arabian peninsula into Mongolia and Central China. The second covers the tundra of Eurasia. In the southern hemisphere small pockets exist in south-west Africa and Madagascar.

Movement Patterns: Horizontal & Vertical Migration

Movement in search of pastures takes two shapes: either over vast horizontal distances across plains, or vertically from one elevation to another in the mountains. The vertical pattern has a special name. The seasonal migration from plains to mountain pastures in summer, and from mountain pastures back to plains in winter, is called transhumance^?.

Why the Number of Pastoral Nomads Is Falling

The number of pastoral nomads has been steadily decreasing and the areas they operate in are shrinking. Two big forces are responsible. First, the imposition of political boundaries means that ancient migration routes now cross hostile borders that demand papers, permits and customs duties. Second, governments have launched new settlement plans to make administration, taxation and education easier, sedentarising populations that lived for centuries on the move.

B. Commercial Livestock Rearing

Unlike nomadic herding, commercial livestock rearing is more organised and capital-intensive. It is essentially associated with western cultures and is practised on permanent ranches. These ranches cover large areas and are divided into a number of parcels, which are fenced to regulate grazing. When the grass of one parcel is exhausted, animals are moved to the next. The number of animals on a pasture is kept according to its carrying capacity.

It is a specialised activity in which only one type of animal is reared. Important species include sheep, cattle, goats and horses. Products such as meat, wool, hides and skin are processed and packed scientifically, and exported to world markets. Rearing of animals on ranches is organised on a scientific basis: the main emphasis is on breeding, genetic improvement, disease control and health care.

4.4 Agriculture — Many Systems, Many Climates

Agriculture is practised under multiple combinations of physical and socio-economic conditions, which give rise to the wide variety of agricultural systems we see across the world. Based on the methods of farming, different types of crops are grown and livestock raised. The two great families of agriculture are subsistence agriculture (where farmers grow primarily for their own consumption) and commercial agriculture (where the farm exists primarily to sell its produce). Plantation agriculture — large-estate, single-crop, capital-intensive — is a third, distinct form.

A. Subsistence Agriculture

Subsistence agriculture is one in which the farming areas consume all, or nearly all, of the products locally grown. Surplus, if any, is small. It can be grouped into two major sub-types — Primitive Subsistence Agriculture and Intensive Subsistence Agriculture.

(i) Primitive Subsistence Agriculture / Shifting Cultivation

Primitive subsistence agriculture^?, also called shifting cultivation, is widely practised by tribes in the tropics — especially in Africa, south and central America and southeast Asia. Vegetation is usually cleared by fire, and the ashes add to the fertility of the soil. For this reason, shifting cultivation is also called slash-and-burn agriculture.

The cultivated patches are very small, and cultivation is done with very primitive tools such as sticks and hoes. After 3 to 5 years the soil loses its fertility and the farmer shifts to another patch of the forest, returning to the earlier patch only after a long fallow. One major problem is that the cycle of jhum becomes shorter and shorter as fertility recovery takes longer than the rest period allows. Shifting cultivation is known by different names in different parts of the tropical world:

(ii) Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

This type of agriculture is largely found in the densely populated regions of monsoon Asia. Although the methods look similar across the region, two distinct sub-types are recognised on the basis of the principal crop:

B. Plantation Agriculture

The Europeans colonised many parts of the world and introduced new forms of agriculture, the most distinctive being plantation agriculture^? — large-scale, profit-oriented production aimed at distant markets. Plantation agriculture was introduced by Europeans in colonies situated in the tropics. The classic plantation crops are:

The characteristic features of plantation farming are:

• Large estates or plantations — far bigger than any peasant holding.
• Large capital investment — for clearing, planting, irrigation and processing.
• Managerial and technical support — often imported from the metropolitan country.
• Scientific methods of cultivation — selected varieties, fertilisers, pesticides.
• Single-crop specialisation — known as monoculture.
• Cheap labour — historically supplied by indentured workers.
• A good system of transportation — linking estates to processing factories and to ports.

SVG — Plantation Crops Around the World

Figure 4.4: Almost every plantation crop sits within the tropics. The colonial fingerprint is clear — French cocoa & coffee in West Africa, British tea in India and Sri Lanka, British rubber in Malaysia and sugarcane & banana in the West Indies, Spanish & American sugarcane and coconut in the Philippines, Dutch sugar in Indonesia and European-managed coffee fazendas in Brazil.

From Colonial Estates to National Ownership

Today, ownership of the majority of plantations has passed into the hands of the governments of the host countries or their nationals. The estates are still there, the trees are still there, the export markets are still there — but the colour of the management has changed. The Dutch once held a monopoly over sugarcane plantations in Indonesia; some coffee fazendas (large plantations) in Brazil are still managed by Europeans, but most Indian tea gardens, Sri Lankan rubber estates and West African cocoa plantations are now domestic enterprises.

Chart — Workforce in Primary Activities Across Selected Countries

Figure 4.5: Approximate share of the labour force engaged in primary activities (red-collar workers) in selected countries. Developing economies retain a much larger primary workforce than developed economies.

4.5 Why This First Layer Still Matters

It is tempting to view hunting, gathering and pastoral nomadism as relics of the past. They are not. Roughly two-thirds of the world's population still depends on agriculture — most of it subsistence agriculture — and millions still earn their living as herders, gatherers, hunters and small-scale fishers. The plantation belt continues to supply most of the world's tea, coffee, rubber and cocoa. Without these red-collar workers, supermarket shelves would empty within days. The next part of this chapter turns to the more commercial branches of farming — extensive grain belts, mixed farms, dairy farms, Mediterranean orchards and the truck-farming gardens that ring every great city.