What are primary industries?

Do you know what primary industries are? Or what is produced by them?

Without even knowing it, we all come into contact with the products of primary industries every single day. From the food you eat for breakfast, to the bus you take to school, each and every part of your day involves things made from the products of primary industries.

One way to describe primary industries would be to say that they are involved in the growing, harvesting, extracting and sometimes processing of natural resources which form the basis of the products we use in our everyday lives. One example would be dairy farming, another would be forestry.

Primary industries also create the basic materials for use in other industries, such as growing and harvesting wheat that can then be turned into the bread which you make your toast from every morning, or the raising of sheep for your Sunday roast.

But it’s not just food that primary industries produce, although that is a large and very useful part of the industry sector. You’ll actually find that there is a primary industry product in pretty much everything that surrounds us. From the wool that is shorn from sheep and spun into the clothes we wear, to the mines that produce metal to make cars and electronic equipment, and to the forests and quarries which produce all the different kinds of construction materials that go into building your house, our whole world is built with primary industry products.

Major businesses in the primary industry sector include agriculture, horticulture, agribusiness, fishing, aquaculture, forestry and all mining and quarrying industries.