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11.2: Primary Sector

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    Primary Sector

    Traditionally, communities create economies from the ground up. Farming, mining, fishing, logging or other extractive industries that pull wealth from the earth are the basis for many local and national economies. Because the natural wealth of the earth is unevenly distributed, some places developed economically much faster than others. In locations where the earth provides opportunities to extract or harvest a particularly valuable commodity, like oil, wealth is likely to accumulate locally. Few economies thrive where the earth provides little.

    harvested timber.png

    Figure Bemidji, MN - A man inspects harvested timber before it is processed into lumber for shipment in 1956. Timber sales are a basic industry in the primary sector of the economy Photo: Donald Kress

    Extractive industries constitute the primary sector of the economy. The United States, like most other industrialized countries, is blessed with abundant natural resources upon which to build a prosperous economy. A principal factor in the poverty of many countries around the globe is a paucity of natural resources upon which to build the primary sector. People in many countries just can’t coax or pull anything out of the ground which is valuable to outsiders.

    A vibrant primary sector often provides quality jobs for locals, and brings in ample money from outside that locals are wise to invest to develop other sectors of the economy.

    However, in many locations, an over-reliance on extractive industries creates as many problems as it solves. Pollution, destruction of the natural environment and ultimately, exhaustion of the natural resource, happens all too often. Sometimes, jobs in the primary sector are physical, dangerous and undermine the long-term health of those employed in this sector.

    Coal Mining

    Coal mining in places like Kentucky and West Virginia is a good example of the risks associated with reliance on a sole extractive industry. Jobs in underground coal mines were especially dangerous for generations of men who braved the mines. The lack of quality career alternatives (like farming) in this region made coal mining one of the more attractive local jobs. Still, workers were recruited from Europe and the Deep South by coal companies to work in the mines of Appalachia. For many Appalachians, coal mining jobs allowed families to stay in the region, where farming was not profitable. However, coal miners often remained poor as a result of coal mining company policies. Miners often made reasonably good wages, but because many mining towns were so geographically remote, mine owners built company towns, in which the coal company owned nearly all the houses, stores and services. Some companies even paid workers using company scrip, rather than US dollars, which forced workers to shop only at company-owned stores. Massive strikes during both world wars helped coal miners increase their wages and benefits, but mine safety remains an issue. Tens of thousands were injured or killed in coal mine accidents over the years; many more contracted a variety of long-term health impairments, like black lung (see health chapter).

    Sixteen Tons - song written by a coal miners son

    Sixteen Tons – A song written by the son of Coal Miner about the debt servitude engineered by some coal companies.

    https://www.youtube .com/watch?reload=9 &v=zUpTJg2EBpw

    Compounding the personal tragedies associated with coal mining is the fact that the vast fortunes made from coal mining largely escaped Appalachia. The huge profits from coal went largely to coal company executives and company shareholders living elsewhere. The movement of profits away from the local economy is known as multiplier leakage. It represents the opposite economic effect of a phenomenon known as the multiplier effect in which the profit generated by one industry or activity generates additional economic activities. Because coal profits were spent or invested elsewhere, locals had less to invest in socially productive infrastructure, like schools and universities that, in turn, might have paved the way for the creation of additional economic opportunities in the region – a process known as economic diversification. Today, once-thriving mining towns that no longer have coal to sell are often abandoned (or nearly so). In Appalachia, the exhaustion of coal reserves, competition from cheaper alternative energy sources (e.g., natural gas, solar, wind) and environmental regulations discouraging the use of high-sulfur coal have crippled the coal economy of Appalachia in the last few decades. Similar conditions and processes often characterize long-term trends in other extractive industries, including logging, fishing, farming, and quarrying.

    Waterway near coal mine.png

    Figure : Brookwood, AL - Coal Slag. Waterways near this coal mining operation in Alabama were highly polluted by the industrial offal of the nearby mine.


    11.2: Primary Sector is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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