History

Subsistence agriculture was predominant in parts of Asia, especially India, and later emerged in various areas including Mexico, where it was based on maize, and in the Andes, where it was based on the domestication of the potato.

Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently, when market-based capitalism became widespread. Subsistence horticulture may have developed independently in South East Asia and Papua New Guinea.

The economy of some Kingdoms in the Gold Coast was mainly dependent on Subsistence agriculture where farm produce was shared within households and members of each household specialized in providing their household with other necessities such as cooking utilities, shelter, home, clothing and furnitures.

Subsistence agriculture had largely disappeared in Europe by the beginning of World War I, and in North America with the movement of sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of the American South and Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s. As recently as the 1950s, it was still common on family farms in North America and Europe to grow much of a family's own food and make much of its own clothing, although sales of the farm's production earned enough currency to buy goods. Many of the items, as well as occasional services from physicians, veterinarians, blacksmiths and others, were often bought with barter rather than currency.

In Central and Eastern Europe subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the transition economy since about 1990.