Economic Sectors: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary, Summaries of Forestry

Download Economic Sectors: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary and more Summaries Forestry in PDF only on Docsity! Sectors of the Economy Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary A nation’s economy can be divided into various sectors to define the proportion of the population engaged in the activity sector. This categorization is seen as a continuum of distance from the natural environment. The continuum starts with the primary sector, which concerns itself with the utilization of raw materials from the earth such as agriculture and mining. From there, the distance from the raw materials of the earth increases. Primary Sector The primary sector of the economy extracts or harvests products from the earth. The primary sector includes the production of raw material and basic foods. Activities associated with the primary sector include agriculture (both subsistence and commercial), mining, forestry, farming, grazing, hunting and gathering, fishing, and quarrying. The packaging and processing of the raw material associated with this sector is also considered to be part of this sector. In developed and developing countries, a decreasing proportion of workers are involved in the primary sector. About 3% of the U.S. labor force is engaged in primary sector activity today, while more than two-thirds of the labor force were primary sector workers in the mid-nineteenth century.