Two Methods of Cultivation Extensive Horticulture and Intensive Agriculture

Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology ANTH 2301 Two Methods of Cultivation: Extensive Horticulture and Intensive Agriculture Extensive horticulture is the term used to describe the first type of farming that humans invented. Trees and other vegetation must be removed before a piece of land can be planted for the first time; this is a laborious process that is often completed by men. Occasionally, a tactic known as "slash and burn" is employed, in which the trees and bushes are chopped down, the remaining material is burned, and the ash is then tilled into the soil to act as fertiliser. Horticultural farmers prepare the top layer of soil for seeding by using hoes and digging tools. They irrigate and feed the sprouting plants with organic fertilisers, including animal excrement, and they frequently weed the gardens. Horticultural groups produce many crops rather than simply one. They cultivate these crops next to each other because they have discovered that some plants are "friends," or that they promote each other's development. We call this technique intercropping. For example, the "three sisters" of Mesoamerica were beans, maize and squash cultivated closely together in flat-topped mounds. First, a few maize plants were sown in the mound's middle. Squash and beans were planted at the base of the maize plants once they were well established. The vine bean plants used the stalks from the maize plants as support as they grew. The other two plants were fertilised by the nitrogen that the bean plants added to the soil. The squash plants dispersed throughout the soil, keeping weeds at bay and safeguarding the three plants' root systems. Societies who engage in a lot of horticulture tend to know a lot about these sustainable agricultural techniques. These methods are all-natural strategies to maximise the health and productivity of each plant while offering a year-round, varied, and well-balanced diet. Horticulture, which uses organic fertilisers and pest control techniques, is a sustainable agricultural practice. But over time, this process does reduce the amount of nutrients in the top soil layer. It becomes essential to leave a certain plot fallow after a certain number of seasons of crop growth. A parcel of land left fallow by horticultural growers is left without cultivation, allowing grasses and brush to spread organically and facilitating the natural buildup of new soil nutrients. Plots may be abandoned for as little as one season or as long as twenty. The farmer clears, tills, and sows another plot for agriculture while the first one regenerates. Many times, horticulturists will have many plots of land in varying states of cultivation and fallowness. Given that it comprises several plots spread across vast distances, this technique of rotating crops over different land areas is known as widespread or shifting farming. Farmers that specialise in horticulture often have a range of plots with unique soils and climate characteristics. For each plot, they customise farming practices, such as crop species, fertilisers, watering techniques, and farming-fallow cycles. In horticultural civilizations, land is sometimes held in trust by family heads or village leaders who assign parcels of land to specific persons rather than being possessed as private property. Usufruct rights are the rights that people have over property that has been allocated to them; they do not own it or have the ability to sell it. These family rights to utilise certain plots are inherited through the father or mother. Upon arriving in a community, newcomers can go up to the leader and request agricultural land parcels. It's also typical in many African civilizations for people to lend one another their plots as a sign of friendship and support. In general, extensive gardening yields sufficient resources to sustain families with extended family members, maybe with some excess to sell in nearby marketplaces. Surplus is the amount that remains after the family's necessities are satisfied. A little excess of horticulturists can occasionally be gathered by families or village chiefs and stored in silos or other buildings for communal consumption during the hard months until the following crop can be reaped. Generally speaking, horticulture does not provide enough excess to sustain populations of non-farmers. In addition to these other crucial tasks, farmers must also be craftsmen, religious experts, and group leaders. Crops that are not very nutrient-rich can be successfully grown on land via extensive horticulture. Such soils are typically found in tropical settings because of the absence of winter dormancy. Autumn foliage death in temperate zones (23 to 66 degrees latitude) deposits dead materials in the soil, which breaks down into humus (hyoo-mus), a rich substance. As new plants emerge in the spring and summer, humus acts as a kind of natural fertiliser. Tropical soils do not build up humus as much as temperate soils do because flora in tropical regions never dies. It is better to use a piece of land a few times and then let the natural vegetation to re-emerge in areas with lower humus levels. Tropical farmers simulate the natural die-off of plants in temperate climes by slashing and burning regrowth. The layer of humus-rich soil is significantly thicker and denser in temperate areas than in tropical ones. Digging deeper to prepare the soils for sowing is beneficial in these places because it allows the humus layer to be distributed into a larger layer of soil, which will act as a nutrient reservoir for the incoming plants. The yearly cycle of flooding and receding big rivers also results in the seasonal deposition of nutrients in the soil in the surrounding areas. Because the rivers kindly deposited organic materials onto their farmlands each year, ancient farmers were able to use the same soils over and over again along the Nile in North Africa and between the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East. Farmers in the riverine region developed irrigation systems to continuously irrigate their crops after learning to manage water flows. The plough was invented by Sumerian farmers who lived in the Mesopotamian crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They used oxen to draw big blades through their vegetable plots. The soil is much more fertile after ploughing for planting. One type of farming known as intensive agriculture involves the use of a plough, the creation of irrigation systems, and the ongoing cultivation of the same plots. Consider that extensive farming entails cultivating several plots over a large area, but intensive farming entails repeatedly using intense techniques to the same plots. This helps you to recall the distinction between extensive and intensive farming. Compared to horticulture, intensive agriculture produces significantly higher yields and can sustain much bigger populations. Increased surplus results from higher yields, therefore communities engaged in intensive agriculture produce populations of non-farmers, including experts in commerce, governance, religion, and craft production. Intensive farmers concentrate on a limited number of crops, usually legumes or grains. To fulfil the requirements of their homes, they sell the excess produced by intensive techniques for additional foods, equipment, and material commodities. The majority of people define agriculture as any form of plant cultivation. However, agriculture is only one type of plant cultivation that anthropologists study—the sort that uses labor-intensive techniques like ploughs, draft animals, irrigation systems, and recurrent plotting. In this chapter, intense agriculture and vast horticulture are both referred to as "plant cultivation." The words extensive horticulture and intense agriculture are used to refer to particular kinds of cultivation.