Questions, Activities, and Projects
Q1. What is the primary sector? How is it different from the secondary sector? Give two examples.
Answer:
Primary Sector: The primary sector includes all economic activities where people are directly dependent on nature to produce goods. It involves the extraction or utilization of natural resources like land, water, vegetation, and minerals.
Difference from Secondary Sector:
- Dependence: The Primary sector relies on natural processes (biological or geological). The Secondary sector relies on the output of the primary sector as raw material.
- Activity: Primary involves extraction or harvesting. Secondary involves processing, manufacturing, or construction to change the form of the material.
Examples:
- Primary: Fishing (extracting food from water bodies).
- Secondary: Canned Fish Factory (processing the fish for long-term storage).
Q2. How does the secondary sector depend on the tertiary sector? Illustrate with a few examples.
Answer: The secondary sector (manufacturing/industry) cannot function without the services provided by the tertiary sector.
- Transportation: Factories need trucks and trains to bring raw materials (like cotton or iron ore) to the factory and to take finished products (like clothes or cars) to the market.
- Banking: Factory owners need loans and banking services to buy machinery and pay workers.
- Communication: Industries need internet and phones to coordinate with suppliers and customers.
- Power Supply: Factories rely on electricity distribution (a utility service) to run machines.
Example: An automobile factory (Secondary) needs engineers (Tertiary service) to design cars, trucks (Tertiary) to bring steel, and dealerships (Tertiary) to sell the final car to customers.
Q3. Give an example of interdependence between primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Show it using a flow diagram.
Answer: Example: The Cotton Shirt
- Primary: A farmer grows cotton plants and harvests cotton bolls (Natural process).
- Secondary: The cotton is transported to a textile mill where it is spun into thread and woven into cloth, then stitched into a shirt (Manufacturing).
- Tertiary: The shirts are transported to retail stores and sold to customers (Service).
Flow Diagram: