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Subsistence is the food necessary to sustain life.

The following is a list of subsistence techniques:

• Hunting and Gathering techniques, also known as Foraging:
  • freeganism — involves gathering of discarded food in the context of an urban environment (eg by dumpster diving, ...].
  • gleaning — involves the gathering of food that traditional farmers have left behind in their fields.
• Cultivation:
  • Horticulture — plant cultivation, based on the use of simple tools.
  • subsistence agriculture — agricultural cultivation involving continuous use of arable (crop) land, and is more labor-intensive than horticulture.
  • Guerrilla gardening - plant cultivation on (unused) areas of land that are not owned by the cultivator himself, but is squat instead
• Pastoralism, the raising of grazing animals:
  • Pastoral nomadism — all members of the pastoral society follow the herd throughout the year.
  • Transhumance or agro-pastoralism — part of the society follows the herd, while the other part maintains a home village.
  • Ranch agriculture — non-nomadic pastoralism with a defined territory.

• Distribution and Exchange:
  • Redistribution
  • Reciprocity — exchange between social equals.
  • Potlatching — a widely studied ritual in which sponsors (helped by their entourages) gave away resources and manufactured wealth while generating prestige for themselves.
  • LETS — Local Exchange Trading Systems.

See also

• List of alternative lifestyles
• Anthropological theories of value
• Staple food
• Society