User:Basilgreenmint1/Subsistence agriculture

The article has content that is relevant to the topic, however it doesn't have as much content as we believe it should. The history and contemporary practices sections are particularly underdeveloped and there is no section about the drawbacks of this practice. The article also appears to be fairly limited in the places it talks about. The article topic is about people who are generally underrepresented but there are little facts or talk about this in the article.

Lead
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace."

Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, today most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods not to support income for food. This is usually for goods that are not necessary for survival, which may include sugar, iron roofing-sheets, bicycles, used clothing, and so forth. Many have important trade contacts and trade items that they can produce because of their special skills or special access to resources valued in the marketplace.

Most subsistence farmers today operate in developing countries. Subsistence agriculture generally features: small capital/finance requirements, mixed cropping, limited use of agrochemicals (e.g. pesticides and fertilizer), unimproved varieties of crops and animals, little or no surplus yield for sale, use of crude/traditional tools (e.g. hoes, machetes, and cutlasses), mainly the production of food crops, small scattered plots of land, reliance on unskilled labor (often family members), and (generally) low yields.

** add summery sentence that describes what will be discussed in article*

History
** Why did subsistence farming start and how, diaspore and plant domestication, developed countries went onto agriculture while still developing countries are using subsistence farming

Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently, when market-based capitalism became widespread.

Subsistence agriculture largely disappeared in Europe by the beginning of the twentieth century. It began to decrease in North America with the movement of sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s.[page needed] In Central and Eastern Europe, semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy after 1990 but declined in significance (or disappeared) in most countries by the accession to the EU in 2004 or 2007.

Contemporary practices
Subsistence farming continues today in large parts of rural Africa, and parts of Asia and Latin America. In 2015, about 2 billion people (slightly more than 25% of the world's population) in 500 million households living in rural areas of developing nations survive as "smallholder" farmers, working less than 2 hectares (5 acres) of land. Around 98% of China's farmers work on small farms, and China accounts for around half of the total world farms. In India, 80% of the total farmers are smallholder farmers; Ethiopia and Asia have almost 90% being small; while Mexico and Brazil recorded having 50% and 20% being small.

Subsistence agriculturalists today face a number of challenges through land zoning policies and lack of government support, raising issues concerning food security for large populations of people. Factors such as these have led to the decline of the practice in recent years as many people have been forced into non-agriculture sectors to provide for themselves.

Areas where subsistence farming is largely practiced today, such as India and other regions in Asia, have seen a recent decline in the practice. This is due to processes such as urbanization, the transformation of land into rural areas, and integration of capitalist forms of farming. In India, the increase in industrialization and decrease in rural agriculture has led to rural unemployment and increased poverty for those in lower caste groups. Those that are able to live and work in urbanized areas are able to increase their income while those that remain in rural areas take large decreases, which is why there was no large decline in poverty. This effectively widens the income gap between lower and higher castes and makes it harder for those in rural areas to move up in caste ranking. This era has marked a time of increased farmer suicides and the "vanishing village".

Climate Change
Most subsistence agriculture is practiced in developing countries located in tropical climates. Effects on crop production brought about by climate change will be more intense in these regions as extreme temperatures are linked to lower crop yields. Farmers have been forced to respond to increased temperatures through things such as increased land and labor inputs which threaten long-term productivity. Coping measures in response to variable climates can include reducing daily food consumption and selling livestock to compensate for the decreased productivity. These responses often threaten the future of household farms in the following seasons as many farmers will sell draft animals used for labor and will also consume seeds saved for planting. Measuring the full extent of future climate change impacts is difficult to determine as smallholder farms are complex systems with many different interactions. Different locations have different adaptation strategies available to them such as crop and livestock substitutions. Rates of production for cereal crops, such as wheat, oats, and maize have been declining largely due to heats effects on crop fertility. This has forced many farmers to switch to more heat tolerant crops to maintain levels of productivity. Substitution of crops for heat tolerant alternatives limits the diversity of crops grown on smallholder farms. As many farmers farm to meet daily food needs, this can negatively impact nutrition and diet among many families practicing subsistence agriculture.