Subsistence farming

“ They not only give a rich return when first subjugated, but, owing to the depth of the soil and the frequency with which they are visited by fertilizing inundations, they yield rich harvests without fertilizing for thousands of years. It is therefore not surprising that we find the peoples who depended upon tillage for subsistence first developed on the great river plains. ”

“ It is true that they do not cultivate the ground; but have they, therefore, no interest in its productions? Does it not supply grass for the sustenance of the wild animals upon which in a great measure they are dependent for their subsistence? Does it not afford roots and vegetables to appease their hunger, water to satisfy their thirst, and wood to make their fire? or are these necessaries left to them by the white man when he comes to take possession of the soil? ”

“ Agriculture, especially of the Middle West, is affected in all its parts by the exploitation of land. To a traveller from the Eastern States, the selling [Pg 34] and re-selling of farm land, without fertilization or improvement by any of the successive owners, is a source of amazement.
"The new lands opened under the Homestead act of half a century ago were often exploited for temporary profit by soil robbers who were experts of their kind. Owing to such farm management, the yield of the acre in the United States gradually decreased. Very little intensive farming was done." ”

“ Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; so that it may be truly said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth. ”

“ Petty cultivation, when pushed to its farthest extent, terminates in spade husbandry, and in it, therefore, the utmost consequences of a minute subdivision of land must be seen. There is no doubt that a country cultivated in this way could be made to produce much more than under any other system of agriculture; and were food the only necessary of man, it might therefore support a much larger population from the growth of its own soil. But then the wealth of this population would be reduced to a bare subsistence ”

“ Whole sections of the poorest land went almost out of cultivation, the abandoned farms of the New England hills bearing solemn witness to the competing power of western wheat fields. Sheep and cattle raising, as well as wheat and corn production, suffered at least a relative decline. Thousands of farmers cultivating land of the lower grade were forced to go West or were driven to the margin of subsistence. Even the herds that supplied Eastern cities with milk were fed upon grain brought halfway across the continent. ”

“ The time devoted in these migrations, is out of all proportion, to the results obtained by agriculture, or by any other stated mode of subsistence. And the supply is after all, inadequate. Seasons of scarcity and want are the ordinary occurrences of every year; and a mere subsistence is the best state of things that is looked for.
Traders visit them annually with outfits of goods and provisions, to purchase the furs and peltries, which are gleaned in their periodical mi219grations. ”

“ The scant supply of wells and pasturage, inadequate in the dry season, involves rivalry and conflict for their possession as agricultural lands do not. Failure of water or grass is followed by the decline of the herds, and then by marauding expeditions into the river valleys to supply the temporary want of food. When population increases beyond the limits of subsistence in the needy steppes, such raids become the rule and end in the conquest of the more favored lands, with resulting amalgamation of race and culture.154 ”

“ And yet sacred as is the soil and binding as is the farmer's obligation to society, the means for providing the world's food is nevertheless at his mercy.
It is a well-known fact that the soil can readily be depleted of its fertility and thus robbed of its strength by a system of exploitation, commonly referred to as "extensive farming." Too much of our land is being thus exploited. On the other hand the productiveness of the soil may be very greatly improved. ”

“ It is a problem of how to bring the precious rills of water on to the alkali and sage brush. Population is increasing faster than the food supply.
New farm lands no longer increase decade after decade in areas equal to those of European states. While the ratio of increase of improved land declines, the value of farm lands rise and the price of food leaps upward, reversing the old ratio between the two. The cry of scientific farming and the conservation of natural resources replaces the cry of rapid conquest of the wilderness. ”

“ The Country deprived of Tillers, by this Expatriation and Inactivity, has yielded nothing; and the Depopulation of the State has daily increased, from the reciprocal and necessary Proportion between Subsistence and Population, and because Agriculture alone can increase Subsistence. ”

“ But if they must manure for a crop of oats, they reckon the crop of natural grass rather more profitable. But the scarcity of bread corn—or rather, indeed, the want of bread—obliges them to pursue the less profitable practice. Oats and bear being necessary for their subsistence, they must prefer them to every other produce. The land at present in tillage, and fit to produce them, is very limited, and inadequate to the consumption of the inhabitants. They are, therefore, obliged to make it yield as much of these grains as possible, by scourging crops. ”

“ In those countries where there is abundance of fertile land, but where from the ignorance, indolence, and barbarism of the inhabitants, they are exposed to all the evils of want and famine, and where it has been said that population presses against the means of subsistence, a very different remedy should be applied from that which is necessary in long-settled countries, where from the diminishing rate of the supply of raw produce all the evils of a crowded population are experienced. ”

“ Without homesteads, with no prospect of anything but unsatisfying labor, with scarce the surety of earning a scanty subsistence,—there is, among the common people, a lack of interest in agricultural efforts. Thousands of laborers leave this land, the fairest on which God's impartial sun shines; few are left to care for the soil; and so, as the shortest cut across this field of deliberately created difficulty, nearly all the land is laid down to grass. In our ride of more than one hundred miles, hardly one fruit-tree was seen, or one nice garden. ”

“ There are so many reluctant, half-hearted farmers in our eastern States nowadays, so many who do only what they have to do in order to survive; who leave the paternal acres to run to weeds or brush; the paternal fences to fall into ruins; the paternal orchards untrimmed and unplowed; the paternal meadows unfertilized, while the fertilizer wastes in the barn-yard; who get but one spear of grass where their fathers or grandfathers got two or three; and whose plaint always is that farming does not pay. What is the matter with our rural population? ”

“ Within countries, poverty has been exacerbated by the unequal distribution of land and other assets. The rapid rise in population has compromised the ability to raise living standards. These factors, combined with growing demands for the commercial use of good land, often to grow crops for exports, have pushed many subsistence farmers onto poor land and robbed them of any hope of participating in their nations' economic lives. ”

“ Hitherto the oak woods had afforded me the safest shelter, but now I was obliged to seek for groves of young pines to retire to at dawn. Heretofore I had found a plentiful subsistence in every corn-field and potato-lot, that fell in my way: but now began to find some of the fields in which corn had grown, destitute of the corn, and containing nothing but the stalks. The potatoes had all been taken out of the lots where they grew, except in some few instances where they had been buried in the field; and the means of subsistence became every day more difficult to be obtained ”

“ It is, indeed, an acknowledged truth, that pasture land produces a smaller quantity of human subsistence than corn land of the same natural fertility, and could it be clearly ascertained that from the increased demand for butchers' meat of the best quality, and its increased price in consequence, a greater quantity of good land has annually been employed in grazing, the diminution of human subsistence, which this circumstance would occasion, might have counterbalanced the advantages derived from the enclosure of waste lands, and the general improvements in husbandry. ”

“ This circumstance led to an important change in the distribution of the population and the peasants previously employed in tillage were turned adrift upon the world. The allotments of arable land which had formerly afforded them the means of subsistence were converted into sheep walks and this policy greatly accelerated a social revolution which had already commenced. ”

“ Though agriculture is regarded with contempt and aversion by pastoral nomads and is resorted to for a livelihood only when they lose their herds by a pest or robbery, or find their pasture lands seriously curtailed, nevertheless nomadism yields such a precarious and monotonous subsistence that it is not infrequently combined with a primitive, shifting tillage. ”

“ Still, Grass, Cattle and Sheep are the Staples; and these require so much less human labor per acre than Grain and Vegetables that I cannot see how the rural, laboring population can find adequate employment or subsistence. It looks as though the gradual substitution of Grass for Grain since the repeal of the Corn-laws must deprive a large portion of the best British peasantry of work, compelling them to emigrate to America or Australia for a subsistence. Such emigration is already very active, and must increase if the present low prices of Breadstuffs prove permanent. ”

“ The traditional rights of subsistence farmers, particularly shifting cultivators, pastoralists, and nomads, must therefore be protected from encroachments. Land tenure rights and communal rights in particular must be respected. When their traditional practices threaten the resource base, their rights may have to be curtailed, but only when alternatives have been provided. Most of these groups will need to be helped to diversify their livelihoods by entering the market economy through employment programmes and some cash-crop production. ”

“ This additional reward at once stimulates them to exertion, and teaches them that steady and continued labor brings the best return. In addition to raising the amount of cotton agreed upon, each freedman is responsible for cultivating corn and potatoes enough for his own subsistence, and land is allotted for this purpose. The laborers are also required to produce corn enough for the subsistence of the plantation mules and horses, for the use of the superintendents, and for the subsistence of all the old and disabled persons for whom provision is not otherwise made. ”

“ The question of their subsistence is likewise a puzzle. They evidently cultivated the soil where it was practicable to do so as fragments of farm products have been found in their dwellings, but in the vicinity of some of the houses there is no tillable land and the inhabitants must have depended upon other means for support. ”

“ If the land does not need draining, it will not forget this treatment for many years, and it will be the farmer’s own fault if it ever runs down again.
In this country, where wages are so high, we must raise large crops per acre, or not raise any. Where land is cheap, it may sometimes pay to compel a cow to travel over three or four acres to get her food, but we cannot afford to raise our hay in half ton crops; it costs too much to harvest them. High wages, high taxes, and high-priced land, necessitate high farming ”

“ But it must not be forgotten that the reclamation of these fertile lands requires the command of some pecuniary resources; and that the farmer or settler who depends on an annual crop for his subsistence should not undertake their cultivation at first. As in the case of mines, the wealth that lies within them is not yielded to mere scratching or prospecting, but requires the use of some capital and trained intelligence to become available. ”

“ If we cast our eye over the agrarian changes of our period, with a view to grouping their main elements under a few easily distinguishable categories, we do not find that they present themselves as a simple series of economic sequences. Behind them all there is, it is true, the fundamental economic fact of the decay of subsistence husbandry. ”

“ Land which cannot possibly yield a profit, is sometimes cultivated at a loss, the cultivators having their wants partially supplied from other sources; as in the case of paupers, and some monasteries or charitable institutions, among which may be reckoned the Poor Colonies of Belgium. The worst land which can be cultivated as a means of subsistence, is that which will just replace the seed, and the food of the labourers employed on it, together with what Dr. ”

“ That half a million of persons are, in effect, subsisted by us; but their actual means of subsistence are drawn from foreign agriculture. If we could transport them to this country, and incorporate them in the mass of our own population, there would instantly arise a demand for an amount of provisions equal to that which would be requisite for their subsistence throughout the whole year. That demand, in the article of flour alone, would not be less than the quantity of about nine hundred thousand barrels, besides a proportionate quantity of beef, and pork, and other articles of subsistence. ”