Primary Activities: Agriculture, Fishing, Forestry and Mining
This domain covers economic activities that directly harvest natural resources. Questions test farming systems, von Thünen’s model, fishing and forestry types, mining classifications and Assam’s rice, tea, jute, oil, coal and limestone economy.
Core rules and concepts
- Primary activities include agriculture, fishing, forestry and mining; they depend on natural conditions but are increasingly commercial.
- Farming types: subsistence and commercial; intensive and extensive; shifting cultivation, plantation and mixed farming.
- Von Thünen predicts land use rings by rent, transport cost and perishability.
- Fishing is capture or aquaculture; forestry is productive, protective or social; mining is metallic or non-metallic, surface or underground.
- Assam’s tea needs well-drained loam, monsoon rain, hill-slope drainage and abundant plucking labour.
Worked example
Why is dairying often closer to a city than grain farming? Reasoning: milk is perishable and heavy relative to value, so transport cost and spoilage push it near the market. Grain is storable and can bear longer transport. Von Thünen’s rent gradient explains the ring: high rent near market favours intensive, perishable products; lower rent farther out favours extensive staples.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling tea processing a primary activity; cultivation is primary, factory processing is secondary.
- Treating shifting cultivation as the same as plantation agriculture.
- Forgetting that mining is primary even though it supplies industry.
- Confusing forestry with logging; protection and conservation are separate functions.
In Assam answers, link rice to flood plains, tea to upland gardens, and oil and coal to specific fields such as Digboi and the Makum coalfield. Name the crop and the condition, not just the district.