Agriculture as a system
Every meal you eat began on a farm. In this lesson we learn to see farming not as a muddy field but as a working system — things go in (inputs), work is done (processes), and useful things come out (outputs). We meet Namibia's three farming systems — small-scale subsistence in the communal north, small-scale cash-crop, and large-scale commercial ranching in the centre and south — and place them on the map. We look at how big farms raise their output with irrigation, GM crops, HYVs, fertilisers and pesticides, weigh the physical and human inputs that shape a farm, work out why food shortages happen and why food aid brings problems, and finish with the environmental damage farming can cause and the strategies that keep the land healthy for the future.
By the end you should be able to (NSSCO Geography 2.2):
- Describe agriculture as a primary activity and describe farming as a system with inputs, processes and outputs
- Define subsistence and commercial farming, and locate on a map of Namibia where small-scale subsistence, small-scale cash-crop and large-scale commercial farming are practised
- Distinguish between the three main agricultural systems with reference to scale of production, methods of organisation and products
- Analyse the strategies used to improve output in large-scale commercial farming: GM crops, HYVs, irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides
- Discuss the physical (relief, climate, soil) and human (economic, social, political) inputs involved in farming
- Discuss economic, climatic and political factors and natural problems that cause food shortages, and the problems of food aid
- Discuss the negative environmental impacts of agriculture (soil erosion, overgrazing, salination, bush encroachment, pollution) and strategies for sustainable agriculture