Economic Activities
Economic Geography: the study of people’s livelihoods,
how livelihood systems vary, & how they are interrelated
to the environment & other people
TYPES OF ECONOMIC LIVELIHOOD
A. Categories of Economic Activity
4. “White-collar” information services
5. High-level decision making
3. “Service-sector” industries
2. “Value added” industries
1. Harvest or extraction
Human Economic Activities
Primary industry—those involved in extracting natural
resources from the Earth.
Secondary industry—processing stage, commonly
called manufacturing, processing, or construction.
Other three types all involve services of some sort, rather than the
extraction or production of commodities.
Tertiary: retail, wholesale, or personal/professional services
Quaternary: information, research, management
Quinary: executive decision makers
B. Locational Factors
for Economic Activities
1. Primary Economic Activities:
-- must be located close to the resource
Primary Economic Activity: Nga Trang, Vietnam
Primary Activities:
I.
Subsistence Agriculture: for survival
II.
Commercial Agriculture: for profit
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Extensive Agriculture
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Intensive Agriculture
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Small labor input for large land area
Relies on natural fertility of soil
Large labor for small land area
Use of machinery, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.
The Green Revolution
Urban Subsistence Farming
III. Resource Exploitation: fishing, forestry, mining
2. Secondary Economic Activities
Needs to be accessible to:
- the resource
- an energy source
- a labor force
- a market
3. Tertiary Economic Activities
• proximity to the market is the most important
locational factor for tertiary activities
4. Quaternary Economic Activities
• access to telecommunications infrastructure &
highly-skilled work force most important
5. Quinary Economic Activities
• locationally tend to cluster