Women in agriculture in China make up a diverse group of women who support agricultural activities in their country. Because China is a large country, rural women should not be considered a monolithic group, but instead have different strategies for success based on group or family relationships. [1]
Based on Confucian principals, farming was an expression of "moral worth" for men of all social classes in China while weaving and creating textiles was a way for women to show their worth in society. [2] Traditionally, "women were subordinated to men," [3] and although men had primary responsibility for the farm, women were certainly involved in farming in the early Chinese economy. [4] During the Han dynasty, women's contributions to agriculture in China increased, most likely due to the innovation and popularization of the pit-farming method. [5] Textile creation, which relied on help and silk, was also considered by early Chinese to be an "agricultural product" rather than a separate craft. [5]
Prior to the Chinese Revolution, small family farms where women contributed to farm and house work, made up the majority of agriculture in China. [6] Women's contributions to the family farm were often overlooked by early twentieth century scholars because women's work was not recognized by men and not reported in economic surveys. [7] Women also did not have land rights in pre-revolutionary China. [7]
As China went through the reform, the farm sector became a powerful force in the economy. [8] The Constitution of the People's Republic of China makes the provision that women are equal to men, but in practice, traditional gender roles have persisted where men are considered "superior to women." [9] After 1949, the Chinese government strongly encouraged women's participation in agriculture. [10]
During the 1980s, China went through a "decollectivization of agriculture," as part of the household responsibility system (HRS) which caused individual households to "undertake a vast majority of agricultural production." [11] HRS also contributed to a greater amount of commercialization in Chinese agriculture. [12] Women's ability to own land was again affected by the HRS, which began to discourage women who had married from filing readjustments to land-ownership, making married women "effectively landless." [13]
By the mid 1990s, 80% of Chinese women lived in rural areas and were doing approximately 70 to 80 percent of the farm work, in addition to caring for family members. [14] After this, however, women's contribution to farm work began to fall and by 2000 had dropped below 51 percent. [15] During this time period, village governments counted women as fully "part of the village labor force," and did not keep separate records for men's and women's labor. [16] The number of women involved in migrant farm work has risen steadily since the 1980s, only 1% of women were earning money as migrant workers, in 2000 that number rose to 7%. [17] In 2000, women made up 59% of livestock activities. [18]
Today, agriculture remains a "dominant occupation in China." [19] China also plans to register all landowners by 2018, a plan which may actually disenfranchise women. [20] However, 13 different provinces of China "issued policy documents that require the protection of women's equal rights to land in the registration process." [20] The problem of women's land rights involves the fact that most married women's land rights "are retained in their natal households." [21] In addition, a survey taken after 2012 found that "only 17.1 percent of existing land contracts and 38.2 percent of existing land certificates include women's names. [22]
Women entrepreneurs in agriculture have been enabled by new market forces to start their own businesses. [23] Shared Harvest, opened in 2012 by Shi Yan, is an organic farm and one of the first farms to take part in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. [24] Trends towards buying CSA foods, such as consumers wanting more organic produce or rejecting the industrialization of agriculture, has helped grow more CSA farms in China. [25]
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or sea.
Organic farming is an agricultural system that uses fertilizers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting. It originated early in the 20th century in reaction to rapidly changing farming practices. Certified organic agriculture accounts for 70 million hectares globally, with over half of that total in Australia. Organic farming continues to be developed by various organizations today. Biological pest control, mixed cropping and the fostering of insect predators are encouraged. Organic standards are designed to allow the use of naturally-occurring substances while prohibiting or strictly limiting synthetic substances. For instance, naturally-occurring pesticides such as pyrethrin and rotenone are permitted, while synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are generally prohibited. Synthetic substances that are allowed include, for example, copper sulfate, elemental sulfur and Ivermectin. Genetically modified organisms, nanomaterials, human sewage sludge, plant growth regulators, hormones, and antibiotic use in livestock husbandry are prohibited. Organic farming advocates claim advantages in sustainability, openness, self-sufficiency, autonomy and independence, health, food security, and food safety.
Intensive agriculture, also known as intensive farming and industrial agriculture, is a type of agriculture, both of crop plants and of animals, with higher levels of input and output per unit of agricultural land area. It is characterized by a low fallow ratio, higher use of inputs such as capital and labour, and higher crop yields per unit land area.
Corporate farming is the practice of large-scale agriculture on farms owned or greatly influenced by large companies. This includes corporate ownership of farms and selling of agricultural products, as well as the roles of these companies in influencing agricultural education, research, and public policy through funding initiatives and lobbying efforts.
An agricultural subsidy is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities. Examples of such commodities include: wheat, feed grains, cotton, milk, rice, peanuts, sugar, tobacco, oilseeds such as soybeans and meat products such as beef, pork, and lamb and mutton.
Agriculture is a major industry in the United States, which is a net exporter of food. As of the 2007 census of agriculture, there were 2.2 million farms, covering an area of 922 million acres (1,441,000 sq mi), an average of 418 acres per farm.
Community-supported agriculture or cropsharing is a system that connects the producer and consumers within the food system more closely by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.
In agriculture, a terrace is a piece of sloped plane that has been cut into a series of successively receding flat surfaces or platforms, which resemble steps, for the purposes of more effective farming. This type of landscaping is therefore called terracing. Graduated terrace steps are commonly used to farm on hilly or mountainous terrain. Terraced fields decrease both erosion and surface runoff, and may be used to support growing crops that require irrigation, such as rice. The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the significance of this technique.
Agriculture in the Empire of Japan was an important component of the pre-war Japanese economy. Although Japan had only 16% of its land area under cultivation before the Pacific War, over 45% of households made a living from farming. Japanese cultivated land was mostly dedicated to rice, which accounted for 15% of world rice production in 1937.
The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.
Agriculture in Thailand is highly competitive, diversified and specialized and its exports are very successful internationally. Rice is the country's most important crop, with some 60 percent of Thailand's 13 million farmers growing it on fully half of Thailand's cultivated land. Thailand is a major exporter in the world rice market. Rice exports in 2014 amounted to 1.3 percent of GDP. Agricultural production as a whole accounts for an estimated 9-10.5 percent of Thai GDP. Forty percent of the population work in agriculture-related jobs. The farmland they work was valued at US$2,945 per rai in 2013. Most Thai farmers own fewer than eight hectares of land.
The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilization. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. As per 2018, agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian work force and contributed 17–18% to country's GDP.
Agriculture in South Korea is a sector of the economy of South Korea. The natural resources required for agriculture in South Korea are not abundant. Two thirds of the country are mountains and hills. Arable land only accounts for 22 percent of the country's land. The most important crop in South Korea is rice, accounting about 90 percent of the country's total grain production and over 40 percent of farm income. Other grain products heavily rely on imports from other countries. Farms range in size from small, family-owned farms to large corporations, but most are small-scale and rely heavily on government support and services in order to survive.
Industrial agriculture is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of crops and animals and animal products like eggs or milk. The methods of industrial agriculture include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade. These methods are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced using these methods of industrial agriculture.
China primarily produces rice, wheat, potatoes, tomato, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed, corn and soybeans.
Agriculture in the Philippines is an important part of the economy of the Philippines with crops like rice, coconut and sugar dominating the production of crops and exports. It employs 27.7% of the Filipino workforce as of 2017, according to the World Bank.
Agriculture in Kenya dominates Kenya's economy. 15–17 percent of Kenya's total land area has sufficient fertility and rainfall to be farmed, and 7–8 percent can be classified as first-class land. In 2006, almost 75 percent of working Kenyans made their living by farming, compared with 80 percent in 1980. About one-half of Kenya's total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: Agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective, and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy.
Agriculture in the Republic of the Congo is mostly at the subsistence level. Self-sufficiency in food production is yet to be achieved. Cassava (manioc) is the basic food crop everywhere in the country except in the southern region, where bananas and plantains are prevalent. Among the cash crops, the most important are sugarcane and tobacco, though palm kernels, cacao, and coffee are also cultivated to some extent. The main consumption crops are bananas, manioc, peanuts, plantains, sugarcane, and yams. Subsistence agriculture is the country's most significant employer, and it is one of the three most important economic sectors. With the government's efforts since 1987, agricultural production has increased due to "abolishing state marketing boards, freeing prices, launching new agricultural credit institutions and closing down most state farms". The Niari Valley in the south is a notable agricultural area.
Agriculture is a significant sector in California's economy, producing nearly $50 billion in revenue in 2018. There are more than 400 commodity crops grown across California, including a significant portion of all fruits, vegetables, and nuts for the United States. In 2017, there were 77,100 unique farms and ranches in the state, operating across 25.3 million acres of land. The average farm size was 328 acres, significantly less than the average farm size in the U.S. of 444 acres.