Hoe-farming

Hoe-farming is a collective term for certain forms of agriculture. In the farming of some early societies, and in some traditional cultures of the recent times or the near past, the tillage was done with simple manual tools like digging sticks or hoes, for example seeding was done manually by making holes for the seeds, putting them inside, then covering them.

The precursor to hoe-farming may be intensive gathering. As for its future, it does not necessarily “become superseded” by applying plough and animal traction, because ecological factors are also very important. Even the prevalence of the tsetse fly can matter. Also cultural factors can be considered (for example the local belief system can contain taboos against animal traction.

Hoe-farming often coincides with long fallow systems and shifting cultivation, contrasted to permanent plough-based cultivation systems and the intensification of agriculture. Hoe-farming may contain slash and burn clearance techniques, but they are not strictly necessary. It is usually embedded in the logic of subsistence agriculture.

Examples

A traditional area of hoe-farming (“Hackbaugürtel”) included Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Maritime Southeast Asia, and the middle parts of the Americas. Presumably early forms of agriculture were much more widespread in the past, but could remain dominant against the spread of intensive farming mainly in the tropics.

The Isanzu were hoe-farming people (while the neighboring Hadzabe kept on living as hunter-gatherers).

See also

• Slash and burn
• Subsistence agriculture

References

• The book is a collection of Hadzabe myths about giants, also some tribe myths about culture heroes, and anecdotical tales.
• Title means Hungarian Ethnological Lexicon, item means “Cultivation”.
• The title means: The plough. Historical development and practical application.