Social Sciences and History / Unit 12 SSH 1127 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying a Farming System From Its Description
The idea
The exam describes a farm and asks which system it is, and the anchor's agriculture chapter sorts by purpose, method and scale. First purpose: subsistence, feeding the farmer's family outside the cash economy, or commercial, producing primarily for sale. Then method, within subsistence: shifting cultivation with swidden clearing; intensive subsistence on small parcels, double cropped where mild; pastoral nomadism, herds moving without fixed pattern; transhumance, herds moving seasonally uphill and down. Within commercial: plantation, one or two export crops on large holdings in developing regions; ranching, livestock grazing extensively; agribusiness, production, processing and distribution together; conventional farming with chemicals and hormones, or organic without them.
In practice
Given "a family clears forest, farms it a few years, moves on", shifting cultivation. Given "a rice family plants and harvests twice a year on a small plot", intensive subsistence with double cropping. Given "herders take the flock to alpine pasture each summer", transhumance. Given "a sugar estate exporting to Europe", plantation. Given "cattle on a vast dry range for market", ranching. Given "a corporation that grows, processes and ships", agribusiness. Ask who eats it, then how the land is worked.
Where people slip
The trap is calling a large farm commercial by size alone; the anchor's test is sale. The second trap is transhumance as nomadism; the seasonal, vertical, returning pattern is the difference.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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