Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. What is meant by ‘primary activities’?
Answer: Economic activities that are directly dependent on the environment, involving the use of earth’s resources such as land, water, vegetation, building materials and minerals.
Q. Why are people engaged in primary activities called ‘red-collar workers’?
Answer: Because of the outdoor nature of their work.
Q. What is transhumance?
Answer: The seasonal migration of herders with their livestock from plain areas to mountain pastures in summer, and back to the plains in winter.
Q. What is shifting cultivation also called, and why?
Answer: It is also called slash-and-burn agriculture, because the vegetation is cleared by burning it and the resulting ash adds to the fertility of the soil.
Q. What is viticulture?
Answer: Grape cultivation, a speciality of Mediterranean agriculture, used to produce fine wines as well as raisins and currants from the inferior grapes.
Q. What is truck farming?
Answer: A form of market gardening in which farmers specialise only in vegetables; it is named for the distance a truck can cover overnight while carrying the produce to market.
Q. What is the Kolkhoz model of farming?
Answer: The model of collective farming introduced in the erstwhile Soviet Union, based on social ownership of the means of production and collective labour, with farmers pooling their land, livestock and labour while keeping small personal plots for their daily needs.
Q. Name the two main types of mining based on the mode of occurrence of minerals.
Answer: Surface (open-cast) mining and underground (shaft) mining.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Distinguish between the two categories of subsistence agriculture named in the chapter.
Answer: Primitive Subsistence Agriculture (shifting cultivation, called Jhuming in North-eastern India, Milpa in Central America and Mexico, and Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia) is grown on small forest patches cleared by fire and worked with primitive tools. Intensive Subsistence Agriculture is practised in densely populated parts of monsoon Asia, either dominated by wet paddy or, where paddy is not practical, by crops such as wheat, soyabean, barley and sorghum, with intensive use of family labour throughout.
Q. What are the two main factors on which the profitability of mining operations depends?
Answer: Physical factors, namely the size, grade and mode of occurrence of the mineral deposit, and economic factors, namely the demand for the mineral, the technology available and used, the capital needed to develop infrastructure, and labour and transport costs.
Q. Give two reasons why the number of pastoral nomads has been decreasing.
Answer: The imposition of political boundaries between countries, and new settlement plans introduced by different governments.
Q. What is co-operative farming? Name one country where it has been very successful.
Answer: A voluntary association in which a group of farmers pool their resources for more efficient and profitable farming, while their individual farms remain intact and farming stays a matter of cooperative initiative. Denmark is the chapter’s example, where practically every farmer is a member of a co-operative.
Q. Name the three main regions of commercial dairy farming, in order of size.
Answer: North Western Europe is the largest, Canada is the second, and South Eastern Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania together form the third.
Q. Why is dairy farming described as highly labour intensive with no off-season?
Answer: Because it needs rigorous, everyday care in feeding and milching the animals throughout the year, unlike crop raising, which has distinct growing and harvesting seasons and periods of rest in between.
Q. What is factory farming?
Answer: A modern development in the industrial regions of Western Europe and North America in which livestock, particularly poultry and cattle, are reared in stalls and pens on manufactured feedstuff, carefully supervised against disease, requiring heavy capital investment in buildings, machinery, veterinary services, heating and lighting, with an emphasis on breed selection and scientific breeding.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Describe the main characteristic features of plantation agriculture.
Answer: Plantation agriculture is a large-scale, profit-oriented production system introduced by European colonists in their tropical colonies. Its main features, as given in the chapter, are: large estates or plantations; large capital investment; managerial and technical support; scientific methods of cultivation; single-crop specialisation; cheap labour; and a good system of transportation linking the estates to the factories and markets for export of the produce.
Q. Explain, with examples, why nomadic herding is described as a ‘primitive subsistence activity’.
Answer: Nomadic herding is called primitive and subsistence because herders rely entirely on their animals for food, clothing, shelter, tools and transport, rather than producing a surplus for sale. They move from place to place with their livestock depending on the availability of pasture and water, though each community keeps to a well-identified traditional territory. In the Himalayas, communities such as the Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis and Bhotiyas migrate from the plains to high-altitude pastures in summer and back to the plains in winter (transhumance), showing how the whole way of life is organised around the animals’ needs rather than around commercial production.
Q. Differentiate between the two types of intensive subsistence agriculture found in monsoon Asia.
Answer: The wet-paddy type is dominated by rice: land holdings are very small because of the high density of population, farmers rely on family labour with intensive use of land, machinery is limited and most operations are manual, and farm yard manure maintains soil fertility, giving high yield per unit area but low yield per labour. The non-paddy type is found where relief, climate, soil and other geographical factors make paddy impractical: crops such as wheat, soyabean, barley and sorghum are grown instead, for example in northern China, Manchuria, North Korea and North Japan, and wheat in the western Indo-Gangetic plains and millets in dry western and southern India; this type is otherwise similar to the wet-paddy type except that irrigation is often used.
Q. Describe the main features of Mediterranean agriculture.
Answer: Mediterranean agriculture is a highly specialised commercial form of farming practised in countries on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea, from Tunisia to the Atlantic coast in Europe and North Africa, and also in southern California, central Chile, south-western South Africa, and southern and south-western Australia. The region is an important supplier of citrus fruits, and viticulture (grape cultivation) is its speciality, producing some of the world’s best wines, while inferior grapes are dried into raisins and currants; olives and figs are also grown. Its advantage is that fruits and vegetables can be grown in winter, when there is great demand for them in the European and North American markets.
Q. What is market gardening and horticulture? Briefly explain truck farming and factory farming as related developments.
Answer: Market gardening and horticulture specialise in high-value crops such as vegetables, fruits and flowers, grown solely for urban markets. Farms are small and located close to good transport links to the high-income urban consumers who form their market, and the activity is both labour and capital intensive, using irrigation, HYV seeds, fertilisers, insecticides, greenhouses and artificial heating in colder regions. Truck farming is the name given when farmers specialise only in vegetables, the name coming from the distance a truck can cover overnight to reach the market. Factory farming is a related modern development in which livestock, particularly poultry and cattle, are reared in stalls and pens on manufactured feed under close disease supervision, with heavy investment in buildings, machinery, veterinary services, heating and lighting.
Q. Distinguish between co-operative farming and collective farming.
Answer: Co-operative farming is a voluntary association: a group of farmers pool their resources to farm more efficiently and profitably, but each individual farm remains intact, and the co-operative mainly helps with procuring inputs, selling produce on favourable terms and cheap processing; it has been most successful in Denmark. Collective farming, based on the Kolkhoz model introduced in the erstwhile Soviet Union, rests instead on social ownership of the means of production and collective labour: farmers pool their land, livestock and labour itself, not merely their resources, though they are allowed to keep very small personal plots to meet their daily needs; its purpose was to correct the inefficiency of earlier methods and boost production for self-sufficiency.
Q. Explain the two methods of mining, and state why underground (shaft) mining is considered riskier than surface mining.
Answer: Surface, or open-cast, mining is used for minerals occurring close to the surface: it is the easiest and cheapest method, needs relatively low overhead costs for safety precautions and equipment, and gives a large and rapid output. Underground, or shaft, mining is used when the ore lies deep below the surface: vertical shafts are sunk, underground galleries radiate out to reach the minerals, and specially designed lifts, drills, haulage vehicles and ventilation systems are needed to move people and material safely and efficiently. It is riskier because poisonous gases, fires, floods and caving-in can lead to fatal accidents, a danger surface mining does not carry to the same degree.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. Discuss the various types of commercial agriculture practised in the world, as described in the chapter, giving the main regions of each.
Answer: Plantation Agriculture: introduced by the Europeans in their colonies in the tropics; large estates, large capital investment, managerial and technical support, scientific methods, single-crop specialisation, cheap labour and good transport for export. The French set up cocoa and coffee plantations in west Africa; the British, tea gardens in India and Sri Lanka, rubber in Malaysia and sugarcane and bananas in the West Indies; the Spanish and Americans, coconut and sugarcane in the Philippines; the Dutch once had a monopoly over sugarcane in Indonesia.
Extensive Commercial Grain Cultivation: practised in the interior semi-arid mid-latitude lands, with wheat as the principal crop and the whole operation mechanised; best developed in the Eurasian steppes, the Canadian and American Prairies, the Pampas of Argentina, the Velds of South Africa, the Australian Downs and the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand.
Mixed Farming: found in the highly developed parts of the world such as North-western Europe, Eastern North America, parts of Eurasia and the temperate latitudes of southern continents, with equal emphasis on crops (wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize, fodder and root crops) and animal husbandry.
Dairy Farming: the most advanced and capital-intensive form of milch-animal rearing, concentrated near urban and industrial centres, with its three main belts being North Western Europe, Canada and South Eastern Australia/New Zealand/Tasmania.
Mediterranean Agriculture: a highly specialised commercial system around the Mediterranean Sea and in similar climates (southern California, central Chile, south-western South Africa and Australia), known for citrus fruits and viticulture.
Market Gardening and Horticulture: high-value vegetables, fruits and flowers grown on small farms close to urban markets, well developed in North-western Europe, North-eastern USA and the Mediterranean industrial districts (with the Netherlands specialising in flowers).
Q. Describe hunting and gathering as economic activities. Where are they practised today, and what is their future?
Answer: The earliest human beings depended on their immediate environment, subsisting on animals they hunted and edible plants they gathered from nearby forests. Primitive societies in very cold or extremely hot climates survived mainly by hunting, using primitive tools of stone, twigs or arrows, which kept the numbers killed limited; illegal hunting (poaching) has since made many species extinct or endangered. Gathering, the oldest economic activity known, is practised in regions with harsh climatic conditions, needs little capital and low technology, and yields very little surplus. It continues today in high-latitude zones (northern Canada, northern Eurasia, southern Chile) and low-latitude zones (the Amazon Basin, tropical Africa, the northern fringe of Australia, interior Southeast Asia). Some gathering has become market-oriented, with gatherers selling barks, leaves, medicinal plants, nuts and tree-trunk products such as rubber and resins after simple processing. Its future is poor: gathering has little chance of becoming important at the global level, since its products cannot compete in the world market against synthetic substitutes that are often of better quality and lower price.
Q. Explain nomadic herding (pastoral nomadism): its nature, the animals reared in different regions, its three core world regions, and why its numbers are declining.
Answer: Nature: nomadic herding is a primitive subsistence activity in which herders depend entirely on their animals for food, clothing, shelter, tools and transport, moving from place to place with their livestock according to the availability of pasture and water, while each community keeps to a well-identified traditional territory.
Animals by region: cattle in tropical Africa; sheep, goats and camel in the Sahara and Asiatic deserts; yak and llama in Tibet and the Andes; reindeer in the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas.
Three core regions: (1) from the Atlantic shores of North Africa, across the Arabian peninsula, into Mongolia and Central China; (2) the tundra region of Eurasia; (3) small areas in south-west Africa and on the island of Madagascar. Movement may be horizontal, over vast distances, or vertical, between elevations, as in the Himalayan transhumance practised by the Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis and Bhotiyas, and the north-south seasonal movement of tundra herders.
Decline: the number of pastoral nomads has been decreasing and the areas they operate in have been shrinking, mainly because of the imposition of political boundaries between countries and new settlement plans introduced by different governments.
Q. Discuss mining as a primary activity: its historical development, the factors affecting it, its two methods, and the changing global pattern of mining today.
Answer: Historical development: the discovery of minerals is reflected in the copper age, bronze age and iron age; ancient use was confined to tools, utensils and weapons, and the real development of mining began only with the Industrial Revolution, since when its importance has kept growing.
Factors affecting mining: physical factors, namely the size, grade and mode of occurrence of the deposit, and economic factors, namely the demand for the mineral, the technology available and used, the capital needed to develop infrastructure, and labour and transport costs.
Two methods: surface (open-cast) mining, the easiest and cheapest method for minerals close to the surface, with low overhead costs and large, rapid output; and underground (shaft) mining, used when the ore lies deep below the surface, needing vertical shafts, underground galleries, and specially designed lifts, drills, haulage vehicles and ventilation, but riskier because of poisonous gases, fires, floods and caving-in.
Changing global pattern: developed economies are retreating from mining, processing and refining because of high labour costs, while developing countries, with their large labour force and aspiration for a higher standard of living, are becoming more important; several countries of Africa and some in South America and Asia now earn more than fifty per cent of their income from minerals alone.
5 Case Studies
(A) 1 mark Name this type of agriculture as it is called in this part of India.
Answer: Jhuming.
(B) 1 mark What is this type of agriculture called in general, and why?
Answer: Shifting cultivation, also called slash-and-burn agriculture, because the vegetation is cleared by burning it and the resulting ash adds to the fertility of the soil.
(C) 2 marks Based on the passage, explain why the chapter describes the future of this type of agriculture as bleak.
Answer: The soil of each patch loses its fertility after a few years, and because fertility is being lost in parcel after parcel, the cycle of jhum becomes less and less, so the land gets less time to recover. The patches are very small and are worked with primitive tools such as sticks and hoes, which keeps yields low. The chapter names this shrinking jhum cycle as one of the major problems of shifting cultivation.
(A) 1 mark Name the mining method suitable for Deposit A.
Answer: Surface (open-cast) mining.
(B) 1 mark Name the mining method required for Deposit B.
Answer: Underground (shaft) mining.
(C) 2 marks Give two reasons why extracting Deposit A would be cheaper than extracting Deposit B.
Answer: Surface mining needs only relatively low overhead costs for safety precautions and equipment and gives a large, rapid output, while shaft mining needs costly specially designed lifts, drills, haulage vehicles and ventilation systems, and carries a higher risk of poisonous gases, fires, floods and caving-in, all of which raise its cost.
6 Map Work
On the given outline map, locate and label the following with suitable symbols:
- An area of subsistence gathering 1 mark
- An area of nomadic herding 1 mark
- An area of commercial livestock rearing 1 mark
- An area of extensive commercial grain farming 1 mark
- An area of mixed farming 1 mark
Answer hints:
- An area of subsistence gathering: Any one of: northern Canada, northern Eurasia, southern Chile (high latitudes); Amazon Basin, tropical Africa, northern fringe of Australia, interior parts of Southeast Asia (low latitudes). Book Fig. 4.2.
- An area of nomadic herding: Any one of: the core region from the Atlantic shores of North Africa across the Arabian peninsula into Mongolia and Central China; the tundra region of Eurasia; south-west Africa; Madagascar. Book Fig. 4.4. (Visually impaired candidates: an area of nomadic herding of Asia, e.g. Mongolia.)
- An area of commercial livestock rearing: Any one of: New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, United States of America. Book Fig. 4.6.
- An area of extensive commercial grain farming: Any one of: Eurasian steppes, Canadian and American Prairies, Pampas of Argentina, Velds of South Africa, Australian Downs, Canterbury Plains of New Zealand. Book Fig. 4.12.
- An area of mixed farming: Any one of: North-western Europe, eastern North America, parts of Eurasia, temperate latitudes of the southern continents. Book Fig. 4.14.