Subsistence agriculture
Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices.
[1] 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".
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.
[2][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.
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.
[4] 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.
[9] Measuring the full extent of future climate change impacts is difficult to determine as smallholder farms are complex systems with many different interactions.
As many farmers farm to meet daily food needs, this can negatively impact nutrition and diet among many families practicing subsistence agriculture.
This form of agriculture is sustainable at low population densities, but higher population loads require more frequent clearing which prevents soil fertility from recovering, opens up more of the forest canopy, and encourages scrub at the expense of large trees, eventually resulting in deforestation and soil erosion.
[16] This way of life is common in parts of central and western Asia, India, east and southwest Africa and northern Eurasia.
[19] Climate with large number of days with sunshine and fertile soils, permits growing of more than one crop annually on the same plot.
Intensive subsistence farming is prevalent in the thickly populated areas of the monsoon regions of south, southwest, and southeast Asia.
[19] Subsistence agriculture can be used as a poverty alleviation strategy, specifically as a safety net for food-price shocks and for food security.
[20] Agriculture is more successful than non-agricultural jobs in combating poverty in countries with a larger population of people without education or who are unskilled.
