PRIMARY SECTOR The primary sector activities involve extracting raw material directly from nature. Some examples are:
ARABLE FARMING
This type of farming is the cultivation of land to produce crops. Farmers can grow dry crops (for example, cereals, grapes and olives), which need tonly rainwater, or irrigated crops, which need extra water to grow (for example, fruit, vegetables and rice).
LIVESTOCK FARMING
FISHING
MINING
Another type of Fishing includes Mining involves taking farming involves catching both fish and natural materials from animals. Farmers buy other animals from the Earth’s crust in and sell them, or keep rivers, lakes and seas two different them to produce food or oceans. Most ways. Underground and other products. fishing occurs at sea. mining is carried out We can distinguish We can distinguish in tunnels below the two types of farming. between deep-sea Earth’s surface, In extensive farming, fishing, which is and open-cast the animals spend a carried out far away mining is carried out lot of time outdoors, in from the coast, on the surface. open spaces. and coastal fishing, In intensive farming, which is carried out the animals are kept near the coast. in enclosed spaces.
FORESTRY
Forestry is the exploitation of forests and tree plantations. The number of forests on Earth is decreasing due to human factors. The process of cutting down forests is called deforestation.
The Primary Sector in Spain Among the crops grown in Spain, we can mention olives, mainly in AndalucĂa, and oranges in the Comunidad Valenciana. Pig farming is very important in the south of the country, mainly in Extremadura. Due to the fact that Spain has many kilometres of coast, fishing is also a very important activity. Nowadays, mining is not as important as it was in the past. The most important forestry product in Spain is cork, which is used for bottling wine.