intensive agriculture, in agricultural economics, system of cultivation using large amounts of labour and capital relative to land area. Large amounts of labour and capital are necessary to the application of fertilizer, insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides to growing crops, and capital is particularly important to the acquisition and maintenance of high-efficiency machinery for planting, cultivating, and harvesting, as well as irrigation equipment where that is required.
Optimal use of these materials and machines produces significantly greater crop yields per unit of land than extensive agriculture, which uses little capital or labour. As a result, a farm using intensive agriculture will require less land than an extensive agriculture farm to produce a similar profit. In practice, however, the increased economies and efficiencies of intensive agriculture often encourage farm operators to work very large tracts in order to keep their capital investments in machinery productively engaged—i.e., busy.
On the level of theory, the increased productivity of intensive agriculture enables the farmer to use a relatively smaller land area that is located close to market, where land values are high relative to labour and capital, and this is true in many parts of the world. If costs of labour and capital outlays for machinery and chemicals, and costs of storage (where desired or needed) and transportation to market are too high then farmers may find it more profitable to turn to extensive agriculture.
However, in practice many relatively small-scale farmers employ some combination of intensive and extensive agriculture, and many of these operate relatively close to markets. Many large-scale farm operators, especially in such relatively vast and agriculturally advanced nations as Canada and the United States, practice intensive agriculture in areas where land values are relatively low, and at great distances from markets, and farm enormous tracts of land with high yields. However, in such societies overproduction (beyond market demands) often results in diminished profit as a result of depressed prices.
