subsistence

Examples of subsistence in the following topics:

• Commercial Farmers

  • The majority of farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use.
  • Landowning yeomen were typically subsistence farmers, but some also grew crops for market.
  • Though the country remained regionally specialized, with the North and South divided by sectional ideology, the growth in commercial agriculture pushed farmers in the South and West away from subsistence agriculture and production for local markets toward a nationally integrated market.

• Early Lifestyles

  • Paleo-Indians subsisted as small, mobile groups of big game hunters, traveling light and frequently to find new sources of food.
  • During much of the Early and Middle Paleo-Indian periods, inland bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct megafauna. 
  • The Clovis peoples did not rely exclusively on megafauna for subsistence. 
  • As the Quaternary extinction event was happening, the early inhabitants of the Americas began to rely more on other means of subsistence.

• A Market Society

  • The large-scale production of cash crops began to replace subsistence farming in the South and West.
  • Summarize the key social and economic transformations that accompanied the nation's movement away from small-scale subsistence farming toward agriculture and manufacturing aimed at the market

• Archaic Hunters and Gatherers

  • The Archaic stage was characterized by subsistence economies supported through the exploitation of nuts, seeds, and shellfish.
  • Simple map of subsistence methods in the Americas at 1000 BCE.Key:[Yellow] Mesolithic; hunter-gatherers [Green] Neolithic; simple farming societies[Orange] Tribal chiefdoms or civilizations; complex farming societies

• Middle Class

  • Terms used by scholars for the non-elite class include "common people," "yeomen," and "crackers. " In the colonial and antebellum years, subsistence farmers tended to settle in the backcountry and uplands.
  • Critics suggest the vast difference in economic classes between the elite and subsistence farmers meant they did not have the same values or outlook.

• Poverty in the Colonies

  • The poorest inhabitants of the American colonies tended to be subsistence farmers, day laborers, indentured servants, and slaves.

• Plain Folk of the Old South

  • The "Plain Folk of the Old South" were white subsistence farmers who occupied a social rung between rich planters and poor whites in the Southern United States before the Civil War.
  • Owsley believed that shared economic interests united Southern farmers; critics suggest the vast difference in economic classes between the elite and subsistence farmers meant they did not have the same values or outlook.

• "Poor Whites"

  • Wetherington suggests that their localism and racism dovetailed with a republican ideology founded on Jeffersonian notions of an "economically independent yeomanry sharing common interests. " During the war plain folk raised subsistence crops and vegetables and relied on a free and open range to hunt hogs.

• The Sectional Crisis Deepens

  • Sectionalism increased steadily between 1800 and 1860 as the North (which phased slavery out of existence) industrialized, urbanized, and built prosperous farms, while the deep South concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor together with subsistence farming for the poor white families.

• The Middle Classes

  • While the Southern Colonies were mainly dominated by the small class of wealthy planters in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, the majority of settlers were small subsistence farmers who owned family farms.