Major Agricultural Systems and Crop Types in Venezuela

Major Agricultural Systems

Market Gardening

There are two types of culture: high floor and ground floor, as they develop in different climatic zones. Includes:

• Vegetables: lettuce, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower.
• Roots and tubers: potato, cassava, celery, beet, carrot.
• Bulbs: onions, garlic.
• Seeds: peas, lentils.
• Fruit: watermelon, melon, pineapple, tomato.

Subsistence or Semi-Subsistence Farming

This is known as conuco (indigenous name) and is practiced in various forms, utilizing human or animal power, or through sedentary or migratory methods. It encompasses a wide variety of crops (cereals, fruits, roots, tubers, grains, and some plantation crops). The force also includes animal husbandry and animal growth.

Livestock and Poultry

Livestock farming includes extensive, semi-extensive, and intensive methods.

Extensive Livestock

This generic type involves maintaining herds such as cattle, horses, mules, goats, and pigs, while others specialize in certain types of offspring (e.g., cattle fattening, dairy or dual-purpose cattle, race horses, poultry).

Plantation Crops

Includes both traditional crops (coffee, cocoa, sugarcane, coconut) and others recently introduced in the country (cashews, pineapples, bananas, oil palm, sisal). These are permanent monocultures and represent the most expanded agricultural systems with mechanized annual crops in Venezuela. Coffee dominates, followed by sugarcane and cocoa.

Mechanized Annual Crops

This includes the production of cereals (maize, rice, wheat), legumes (peanut, sesame, sunflower), and fiber (cotton). The production of these crops utilizes complex technologies (mechanization, fertilizer, pesticides, and fungicides) and is grown on a large scale. Maize contributes the greatest value to the agricultural sector.

Commercial Pomology

This involves the production of a wide variety of fruit trees:

• Citrus: orange, grapefruit, tangerine.
• Non-citrus fruits: mango, papaya, guava, avocado, peach.
• Vines: grapes.

Intensive Production

This includes livestock fattening or raising livestock and has also introduced improved breed livestock through genetic crosses. The livestock sector provides half of the total value of agricultural production.