HKDSE Geography/M5/The Farming System

Agriculture is defined as the cultivation of crops or rearing of livestock for food and raw materials for clothing, shelter and secondary industries. It can be regarded as a system with inputs, processes and outputs. See this table:

Inputs	Processes	Outputs
Physical inputs include the weather and climate (sunlight, rainfall...), land (relief, aspect, soil...), drainage, and of course seeds and livestock. Cultural inputs include labour, capital, entrepreneurship, technology (machinery, equipment, agrochemicals...), management, government policy, transport, market, training, advisory services.	For crop cultivation: Ploughing, sowing, irrigating, weeding, fertilising, harvesting For livestock rearing: Breeding, grazing, feeding, shearing, vaccinating, milking, slaughtering	They include products such as crops and animal products, as well as by-products like animal excrement, waste water, weeds, stubble and so on. In commercial farming, the products will be sold to the market. The profit/income/cash (NOT capital) earned will be used on future inputs, forming a feedback loop.

In the sections below, we will study the factors that affect farming decisions. This includes

• Decisions on the crop types grown
• Decisions on the amount of input