Extensive agriculture | Organic Farming, Crop Rotation & Sustainable Agriculture (2024)

FAQs

What is extensive farming AP human geography? ›

Extensive farming is a type of agricultural production that involves the use of relatively low levels of inputs, such as labor, capital, and chemicals, in order to produce crops or livestock.

Extensive farming practices include shifting cultivation, nomadic herding, and ranching.

Definition. System of crop cultivation using small amounts of labor and capital in relation to area of land being farmed. The crop yield in extensive agriculture depends primarily on the natural fertility of the soil, terrain, climate, and the availability of water.

Because different crops have different nutritional needs and tend to be vulnerable to different diseases and pests, rotating what crops are grown in a specific location can reduce soil depletion and the need for as much pesticide and fertilizer use.

Sustainable agriculture: Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil-restoring crops with cash crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and pesticides. Related to Agroecology. Swidden: A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Both extensive and intensive farming can have negative environmental impacts. Extensive farming requires large amounts of arable land and has often led to deforestation, while intensive farming involves chemicals that negatively impact the environment and native species.

Extensive farming most commonly means raising sheep and cattle in areas with low agricultural productivity, but includes large-scale growing of wheat, barley, cooking oils and other grain crops in areas like the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia.

Examples of extensive agriculture include: Livestock Ranching: Livestock ranching is an extensive, non-intensive, form of farming. Ranching involves raising livestock, such as cattle, on large open pastures. Animals graze freely on natural vegetation without intensive feeding or housing facilities.

For example, say a farmer has planted a field of corn. When the corn harvest is finished, he might plant beans, since corn consumes a lot of nitrogen and beans return nitrogen to the soil. A simple rotation might involve two or three crops, and complex rotations might incorporate a dozen or more.

Answer and Explanation: Extensive agriculture is practiced in most regions of the world including western Canada and the United States, Australia, Russian and most of central Asia, parts of Europe and South America and Africa.

What are the effects of extensive agriculture? ›

Environmental Impact

The excessive use of fertilizers can alter the soil composition, leading to nutrient imbalances and reduced microbial activity, affecting the long-term productivity and health of the land. Moreover, the reliance on pesticides in intensive farming adversely affects ecosystems.

Advantages of traditional farming include improved soil fertility, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity maintenance. Disadvantages include negative implications of slash-and-burn activities in shifting agriculture.

Food plot crop rotation is an excellent practice. However, it is possible to plant corn in the same location multiple years in a row. However, there is a much better chance of allowing the population of pests specific to that crop to increase significantly as their cycle is never broken by rotation crops.

The sequence of four crops (wheat, turnips, barley and clover), included a fodder crop and a grazing crop, allowing livestock to be bred year-round. The four-field crop rotation became a key development in the British Agricultural Revolution.

An agricultural practice known as "intensive farming" uses a lot of labor and resources compared to the amount of land it occupies. Extensive farming is a farming method that involves cultivating huge farms with comparatively smaller inputs, such as cash and labor.

Final answer: Extensive subsistence agriculture involves the use of large areas of land with lower labour intensity. Examples include slash-and-burn agriculture or shifting cultivation and nomadic herding.

However, intensive meat and dairy production are typically monoculture operations which removes the opportunity for establishing a closed-farm system. Contrastingly, extensive farming systems depend on the carrying capacity [soil fertility, terrain, water availability, etc.]

Extensive grazing is that in which livestock are raised on food that comes mainly from natural grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts. It differs from intensive grazing, where the animal feed comes mainly from artificial, seeded pastures.