Farming activities are mainly related to agriculture which is a big concept, but simple farming includes the rearing of animals living in both water and land and crop cultivation. It’s an integral part of the human activities of agriculture to survive them. Generally, farmers aim at providing enough, healthy food to feed for themselves, but modern commercial farming’s aim is to supply to the ever-increasing population worldwide.
Differential types of farming practices are practiced in several regions across the planet supported by various environmental factors side by side demand and supply also. Factors like climate and soil fertility affect the farming type, and force practices the farmers can adopt easily. Generally at present farming practices includes farming, nomadic herding, commercial plantation, livestock rearing, etc.
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What is Farming?
In a common ward, farming involves rearing animals living in both land and water, and growing crops for secondary or final goods, and food. It’s an integral and important part of agriculture, which began thousands of years ago probably along with very little after human civilization. However, neither the precise time the practice began nor its age is understood. Farming led to the increase of the Neolithic Revolution. It had been an era when people abandoned nomadic looking for city settlements.
The Fertile Crescent, traversing the Levant, the Nile Valley, and Mesopotamia, is believed to be where agriculture and domestication of plants and animals were first practiced. Countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Jordan structure the world that was once referred to as the Fertile Crescent.
People first grew crops like barley and wheat. Although they firstly engaged in agriculture, they still collected most foods from the wild, and with the changes of time, this process comes into commercial farming to make a profit. Changes in soil fertility and therefore the weather could have led people to start farming. Unlike hunting and gathering food from the wild, farming can feed more people on an equivalent size of land.
Various factors determine the sort of farming a farmer can adopt. The common and integral factors are human resources like distance to the demanded market and human labor, and physical factors like soil quality and climate determine the simplest sort of farming for any given area. Farmers need to choose farming types suitable for his or her unique local physical environment. They need to also make sure that their products would sell within the local market.
Specific agricultural activities and what’s produced determine the sort of farming in question. Here are a number of the most sorts of farming you would like to know:
Top 10 Types of Farming: Practiced Across the World
1. Arable Farming
Arable farming is one of the types of farming that involves only growing crops such as wheat and barley or other corn-related crops rather than keeping livestock, raising fish commercially, or growing fruit and vegetables. Generally, arable land is used for arable farming. This type of farming is practiced in warm climates, and huge flat land Arable land is generally very fertile and has good growing capabilities of crops.
It is important that the arable land would be neither too wet nor dry so much. Land ideal for growing crops should be fairly sheltered and suitable to be used of machinery. In the UK, New Zealand, Tanzania, and many other countries this sort of farming is specially adopted.
A study by Pof. El Titi (1993) shows that integrated arable farming systems, based on the concepts of Integrated Agriculture or Integrated Production are generating an increasing curiosity as a substitute to traditional intensive farming systems. The consequences from several path-breaker arable projects in the 80s and early 90s, as regards profitability as well as ecological and agronomic effects, and assuring to arable farming which should include an assessment of their environmental impact.
2. Pastoral Farming
Pastoral farming is one kind of opposite of arable farming. Generally we by pastoral farming we mean rearing animals, conducted only in cold and wet climates which is not suitable for growing crops. Land with steep slopes, hilly, and poor or less fertile soils cannot assist the use of machinery, farming equipment nor provide the nutrients to the crops needed to grow. Only heather and grasses can grow on that kind of land.
It is very common that comparatively strong winds on the steep slopes can also easily damage crops. So, they are ideal for rearing animals such as sheep, cows, and goats. In the UK, Bhutan, Nepal, and Mongolian highland areas are favorable for pastoral farming. Sheep, cow, goat, and other livestock of hilly-friendly breeds can easily graze on hilly areas and feed on the kind of grass growing in such areas.
3. Mixed Farming
With the growing population, the demand for food is increasing rapidly. But cultivable land is decreasing, so to meet up the growing population demand mixed farming or integrated framing is very much important in modern framing. Though this farming system is not a new concept, specialists are now thinking about it.
The mixed farming system is a farming method that involves growing crops and rearing animals on the same piece of land at the same time. Mixed farming, the combination of pastoral and arable farming, supports each other to increase farm yield. This type of farming method decreases the risk of making losses because of poor weather conditions. If the crops are not doing perfect, animals on the farm are then a good source of food and money for a commercial mixed farm.
Furthermore, animals supply natural manure to farmers to improve soil fertility for crops to grow and increase yield.
4. Subsistence Farming
Subsistence farming, the opposite thinking of commercial farming, is a system of farming in which all or almost all the goods required by the farm are usually provided by the family. This farming system generally continues without any significant surplus for sale.
Subsistence farming is includes growing crops and rearing animals for personal use. It is done on a small scale with the focus of feeding the farmer’s family only, and there is no motive to earn profit. Generally, in remote areas, village life people run this type of farm. It can be labor-intensive in terms of manpower in use, though very little amount of machinery or technology is used depends on the farmer’s willingness. Subsistence farmers are defined to be self-sufficient.
5. Commercial Farming
Commercial Farming, money-making farming, is a type of farming that uses commercially, or higher doses of modern inputs to produce a higher amount of product and increases productivity. High-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, modern chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides are used to get better output. Commercial farming is the opposite concept of subsistence farming.
In order to gain the economy of scale, the commercial farming operator has to be very efficient and practiced large-scale farming, as the goal of the farmer is to maximize the profit margin. Commercial farming includes the rearing of animals or the growing of crops on a large scale. It is mainly capital intensive. Technology transfer and labor transfer are common affairs here. Technology and machinery are used by few laborers. Generally, this type of farming includes monoculture, like flowers, bananas, coffee, and even vertical farming.
6. Extensive and Intensive Farming
Extensive farming or cultivation refers to increase cultivated land to increase more output. In this type of farming, farmers have to increase the size of land for cultivation to get better output yield remaining other factors of production unchanged or constant. So, we can call it one kind of arable farming.
On the other hand, intensive farming refers to increasing production by increasing input factors like capital or capital goods and labor keeping the land amount constant. This type of farming is called commercial or capital intensive farming like vertical farming. Modern aquaculture, like biofloc systems, commercial fish farming, vertical farming, catfish farming in a tank, and stall-feed goat farming, is the best example of intensive farming.
7. Nomadic Farming
Nomadic farming runs the nomadic people involving mainly animals. Nomadic people move their animals from one place to another in search of pasture and water. Nomadic farming is somehow related to pastoral farming.
These types of farming are practiced in big grassland so that the farmers can feed their animals easily. Different regions across the world like, Nepal, Ladakh(India), Bhutan, Mongolia, Australia, and many other hilly areas are used to rear different animals under this type of farming. They include camels, sheep, pigs, cattle, donkeys, goats, and horses. As a type of subsistence farming, it provides families with food.
8. Sedentary Farming
Sedentary farming implies the cultivation of the same piece of land for many years. Unlike nomadic farming or subsistence farming, the land is used permanently for growing crops or rearing animals a little bit commercially. With its origins in the Americas and Eurasia very before the modern framing, the practice is commonly believed to have started about 10,000 B.C.E to 9000 B.C.E.
History tells that hunters and foragers were first to live in America permanently from 20,000 B.C.E to 18,000 B.C.E. and by 7,000 B.C.E, agriculture started to spread to South America. Sedentary Farming furthered the development of early civilizations.
9. Poultry Farming
Poultry farming is another important type of farming that involves the rearing of domesticated birds such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, for the purpose of production of meat or eggs for food, subsistence, or commercial purpose. Poultry farming has originated from the agricultural era.
Generally, commercial poultry farming recently has got popularity among the farmers. To get huge profit poultry are farmed commercially in great numbers with chickens in a farm. Global Animal Slaughter Statistics And Charts more than 60 billion chickens are raised annually and killed to get meat as a source of food, though we get lots of eggs.
Chickens rearing for eggs are generally called layers while chickens rearing for meat are called broilers. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S exports about 20% of all its poultry meat.
10. Fish Farming
Fish farming is commonly known as aquaculture. So, fish farming is a form of aquaculture in which fish are raised in enclosures to be a commercial product or subsistence as food. It is one of the fastest-growing areas of animal for food production. At present, more than half the fish consumed globally are raised in artificial environments under commercial fish farming. Commonly farmed fish species include carp fish species (Rohu, Grass carp, Silver carp, and Common carp), catfish, salmon, tuna, cod, trout, eel, and halibut. Recently catfish farming in Africa has become very popular.
Today artificial fish farming like biofloc has become very popular with commercial fish farmers. Here we need a large fish tank made of concrete or plastic tank instead of an earthen pond, but proper water management is very much important in the modern fish farming method.
Other types of farming are home farming, vertical farming, container farming, Industrial farming, Dry farming, Cattle farming, Plantation farming, Shifting farming, Terrace farming, and Multiple farming. All types of farming are not practiced commercially across the world.
