A lot has been said about extensive farming, but actually the name given to the fact is less than apt. At the least, using extensive as an opposite to intensive seems a weird choice of words.

In all the definitions I found so far, extensive farming was defined as an opposite to intensive farming. Therefore, intensive farming seems the right starting point. Intensive farming means food production under industrialized conditions, where high yield is the paramount goal of the producer irrespective to quality. This goal is reached by using machines, artificial fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, steroids, and other substances harmful to environment, animals, and people. As an added minus, genetically altered plants are being used ever more frequently, doing even more harm.

Did you find any mention of size in this definition?

But still, extensive farming is usually posed in the opposite to intensive farming. Extensive farming is defined by using more land with lower yield to produce the same amount of food. The use of toxic waste as cited under intensive farming might be less, depending on how low the industry puts the price for its harmful products for the farmer. The quality is still not an issue. The main point is the lower yield per hectare.

For example, in East Anglia, intensive use of land may give wheat yields as high as 53 tonnes per hectare, whereas an extensive wheat farm on the Canadian prairies may produce an average of 8.8 tonnes per hectare.

But extensive farming is not limited to limitless plains. The inventor of the term seems never to have left his farm in the prairies to look at the real world. Extensive farming is done anywhere in higher altitudes in mountain ranges, be it the Andes, Pyrenees, Alps, or the Himalaya. And these farms can’t be described as extensive, as they are small holdings. Definitely, this expression is a misnomer. It should be called non-intensive farming.

For obvious marketing reasons, extensive farm producers are trying to add cheatingly that toxic waste is not used, but that simply is not true, as at least antibiotics are heavily used as well. Extensive farming has nothing to do with natural or organic farming.

Intensive farming may be used on field crops such as wheat or corn, and typically is done in large acreages with monoculture planting. It is therefore not only useful but essential to use all the artificial help there is. Soil depletion, nitrate saturation, low nutritive values, and boring landscapes are the logical consequence of this insanity.

Further typical intensive farming is done with animals, chickens, cows, and pigs are squeezed into batteries. Meat coming from these batteries is lowest quality, as these animals produce meat with high fat and water content due to lack of movement.

Fish may be intensively farmed, like carp, catfish, trout, and salmon. Salmon and trout from intensive farms may contain more hormones and antibiotics than any other intensively produced food. Salmon and trout farms pollute rivers with antibiotics and hormones to a high degree, as well. Carp and catfish on the other hand are sturdy fellows with low requirements on water flow and quality, and therefore need less artificial help to survive.

A study published by Göttingen University in Germany in 1992 showed that land farmed extensively reduced the nitrate content in the soil and lowered the risk of nitrate leakage into rivers and lakes considerably.

All crops and animals that are viable for intensive farming may be grown or reared in extensive farming units as well. But there are certain yields that may not be intensely farmed, like mussels. They are either put to wooden poles in the water for growing, on ropes hanging in the water and protected by nets, or ground seeded to protected growing plots. After that, they more or less have to fend for themselves. Trees are also used in extensive farming, but monoculture has negative impacts on flora and fauna in these regions.

Extensive farming by need usually is found in mountainous or hilly regions, or moors and other low nutrient soil types. Animals suited to such conditions are typically sheep, goats, camels, lamas, and yaks. For the wide ranging variant in plains, cattle, bison, and water buffalo are typical, though the latter is reared these days in the Alps of Italy and Switzerland as well to produce the up market buffalo mozzarella.

All in all, extensive farming seems not to hinge on the size of the farm but on the use of artificial helpers. I am therefore of the opinion that the term of extensive farming should be dropped in favour of non-intensive farming.