Pragnya IAS · Chapter 4 of 19 · World farming systems
Areas of primitive subsistence agriculture map study
Locate shifting cultivation across the humid tropics and learn its regional names — jhum, milpa, roca and ladang.
STUDY NOTE 1
A humid-tropical belt
Primitive subsistence (shifting) agriculture occupies the Amazon basin, central Africa, Southeast Asia and its islands, and India’s northeast. High rainfall and heavy leaching make permanent fields difficult without inputs.
STUDY NOTE 2
One practice, many names
Jhum in northeast India, milpa in Central America and Mexico, roca in Brazil, ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia, masole in central Africa — the same slash-and-burn cycle under local names.
STUDY NOTE 3
The cycle
A forest patch is cut and burned, cropped for a few years until fertility falls, then abandoned to regrow while the family moves to a new patch. Falling population pressure shortens the fallow and degrades the forest.
STUDY NOTE 4
Read the blanks
Temperate lands are blank — any option shading Europe or the USA fails. The practice belongs to sparsely populated tropical forest regions, not to the intensive rice lands of the Asian plains.
Map reading activity
Mark the Amazon, Congo basin, Borneo, northeast India and Central America. Match jhum, milpa, roca and ladang to their regions from memory.
What does this areas of primitive subsistence agriculture lesson explain?
Primitive subsistence (shifting) agriculture occupies the Amazon basin, central Africa, Southeast Asia and its islands, and India’s northeast. High rainfall and heavy leaching make permanent fields difficult without inputs.
UPSC map practice & Geography Optional connection
For UPSC GS I and Geography Optional economic and human geography revision, connect the regional examples with resources, transport and environmental conditions. Use a labelled sketch and explain the locational factors; examples are not a current production ranking. These are Pragnya-authored exercises, not official UPSC previous-year questions.
References & original artwork
This lesson covers chapter 4 of the supplied reference curriculum. Pragnya IAS notes, activities and questions are independently authored; source PDF pages, branding, personal watermarks and unverified PYQs are not republished. Earth image: NASA Blue Marble, distributed via WebGL Earth; resized and compressed for this lesson. World coastlines: Natural Earth public-domain 1:110m land, simplified. These are educational concept views, not legal boundaries, forecasts or navigation maps.