Extensive farming or extensive agriculture (as opposed to intensive farming) is an agricultural production system that uses small inputs of labour, fertilizers, and capital, relative to the land area being farmed.
Extensive farming most commonly refers to sheep and cattle farming in areas with low agricultural productivity, but can also refer to large-scale growing of wheat, barley and other grain crops in areas like the Murray-Darling Basin. Here, owing to the extreme age and poverty of the soils, yields per hectare are very low, but the flat terrain and very large farm sizes mean yields per unit of labour are high. Nomadic herding is an extreme example of extensive farming, where herders move their animals to use feed from occasional rainfalls.
Read more about Extensive Farming: Geography, Advantages, Disadvantages
Famous quotes containing the words extensive and/or farming:
“We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age.
Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The measure discriminates definitely against products which make up what has been universally considered a program of safe farming. The bill upholds as ideals of American farming the men who grow cotton, corn, rice, swine, tobacco, or wheat and nothing else. These are to be given special favors at the expense of the farmer who has toiled for years to build up a constructive farming enterprise to include a variety of crops and livestock.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)