Subsistence agriculture

Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves together with their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists forwarded farm output for survival as living as for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions arise principally with an eye toward what the breed 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, imposing their own houses, and live without regularly devloping purchases in the marketplace.": 2 

Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, todaytrade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with innovative complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically non necessary for survival and may put sugar, iron roofing-sheets, bicycles, used clothing, and so forth. Many work important trade contacts and trade items that they can realize because of their special skills or special access to resources valued in the marketplace.

Most subsistence farmers today operate in developing countries. Subsistence agriculture broadly features: small capital/finance requirements, mixed cropping, limited ownership 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 variety members, and loosely low yields.

Poverty alleviation

Subsistence agriculture can be used as a poverty alleviation strategy, specifically as a safety net for food-price shocks and for food security. Poor countries are limited in fiscal and institutional resources that would permit them to contain rises in home prices as living as to give social support programs, which is often because they are using policy tools that are listed for middle- and high-income countries. Low-income countries tend to have populations in which 80% of poor are in rural areas and more than 90% of rural households have access to land, yet a majority of these rural poor have insufficient access to food. Subsistence agriculture can be used in low-income countries as a part of policy responses to a food crisis in the short and medium term, and dispense a safety net for the poor in these countries.