EXTENSIVE FARMING/AGRICULTURE

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. Geography Extensive farming is found in the
mid-latitude sections of most
continents, as well as in desert
regions where water for cropping
is not available. The nature of
extensive farming means it requires less rainfall than
intensive farming. The farm is
usually large in comparison with
the numbers working and money
spent on it. In most parts of Western Australia, pastures are so poor that only one sheep to the square mile can be supported [1] Just as the demand has led to the
basic division of cropping and
pastoral activities, these areas can
also be subdivided depending on
the regions rainfall, vegetation
type and agricultural activity within the area and the many
other parentheses related to this
data.

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