Diversifying the general food base takes a mixed subsistence strategy a step further. While employing a mixed strategy diversifies the range of subsistence pursuits, diversifying the general food base deals with diversification within those pursuits. This form of diversification uses a spatial strategy to buffer against risk at both the production and consumption levels. For example, in the same way that people can diversify their cultivation strategy through intracropping and intercropping, people can also diversify their hunting and fishing strategies through increasing the range of habitats in which they procure animals, taking more types of prey, and taking more age groups (e.g., not targeting specific age/sex profiles of deer) (McCloskey 1975:118). By being less selective, people can significantly increase their hunting and fishing yields. Because of problems with long-term preservation and storage of meat in humid tropical environments prior to modern technology, diversification of animal procurement probably represented a response to immediate food shortages (as a result of failure in other food production strategies) rather than a preventative measure.