AMSCO Unit 5 All VOCAB

Agriculture

Agriculture

The process by which humans alter the landscape in order to raise crops and livestock for consumption and trade.

Climate

The long-term weather patterns in a region.

Subsistence Agriculture

Primary goal is to grow enough food or raise enough livestock to meet the immediate needs of the farmer and his or her family.

Commercial Agriculture

The primary goal of the farmer is to grow enough crops or raise enough livestock to sell for profit.

Intensive

Concentrated on a single area or subject or into a short time; very thorough or vigorous.

Extensive

Obtaining a relatively small crop from a large area with a minimum of attention and expense.

Capital

The money invested in land, equipment, and machines.

Pastoral Nomadism

This type of subsistent extensive agriculture is practiced in arid and semi-arid climated throughout the world.

Shifting Cultivation

In this type of subsistent extensive farming, farmers grow crops on a piece of land for a year or two.

Plantation

A large commercial farm that specializes in one crop.

Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming

An intensive commercial integrated system that demonstrates an interdependence between crops and animals.

Grain Farming

In regions too dry for mixed crop agriculture, farmers often raise wheat.

Commercial Gardening

Typical fruits and vegetables grown in the United States include lettuce, broccoli, apples, oranges, and tomatoes.

Dairy Farming

Traditionally, diaries were local farms that supplied products to customers in a small geographic area.

Milk Shed

The geographic distance that milk is delivered.

Mediterranean Agriculture

Practiced in regions with hot, dry summers, mild winters, narrow valleys, and often some irrigation.

Transhumance

The seasonal herding of animals from higher elevations in the summer to lower elevations and valleys in the winter.

Livestock Ranching

The commercial grazing of animals confined to a specific area.

Clustered (nucleated) Settlements

These settlements had groups of homes located near each other in a village and fostered a strong sense of place and often shared of services, such as schools.

Dispersed Settlements

Patterns in which farmers lived in homes spread throughout the countryside.

Linear Settlement

In which buildings and human activities are organized close to a body of water or along a transportation route.

Metes and Bounds

Were used for short distances and often referred to features or specific points.

Public Land Survey System (Township and Range System)

Created rectangular plots of consistent size.

French Long-lot System

In which farms were long, thin sections of land that ran perpendicular to a river.

First (Neolithic) Agricultural Revolution

This was the origin of farming, it was marked by the domestication of plants and animals. Much of the farming that took place during this time was subsistence farming.

Hunters and Gatherers

Any person who depends primarily on wild foods for subsistence.

Animal Domestication

Is the process of using animals for human use.

Plant Domestication

Is the process of using plants for human use.

Major Agricultural Hearths

Known as the "birthplace" of a crop, or where a crop is known to have originated before its spread throughout the world.

Independent Innovation

Crops and animals were domesticated in multiple regions with seemingly no interaction among the people.

Columbian Exchange

Was the global movement of plants and animals between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas.

Second Agricultural Revolution

Began in the 1700s, used the advances of the Industrial Revolution to increase food supplies and support population growth.

Enclosure Movement

Were a series of laws enacted by the British government that enabled landowners to purchase and enclose land for their own use.

2nd Revolution Advances

It involved the mechanization of agricultural production, advances in transportation, development of large-scale irrigation, and changes to consumption patterns of agricultural goods.

Crop Rotation

The technique of planting different crops in a specific sequence on the same plot of land in order to restore nutrients back into the soil.

Irrigation

The process of applying controlled amounts of water to crops using canals, pipes, sprinkler systems, or other human-made devices, rather than to rely on just rainfall.

2nd Revolution Impact on Deomgraphics

Rapid increase in population due to food availability as the era marked an increase in crop yields and animal productivity.

Third Agricultural Revolution

This revolution expanded mechanization of farming, developed new global agricultural systems, and used scientific and information technologies to further previous advances in agricultural production.

Green Revolution

Dr. Norman Borlaug laid the foundation for scientifically increasing the food supply to meet the demands of an ever-increasing global population.

Impact of Normal Borlaug

Successful for efforts to increase crop yields came to be known as the "Green Revolution".

Hybridization

The process of breeding two plants that have desirable characteristics to produce a single seed with both characteristics.

Machinery's Impact on Green Revolution

Mechanized agricultural production, thus making farm work easier.

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)

A process by which humans use engineering techniques to change the DNA of a seed.

Positive Impacts of the Green Revolution

Led to high productivity of crops through adapted measures, such as (1) increased area under farming, (2) double-cropping

Negative Impacts of the Green Revolution

Been widely criticized for causing environmental damage. Excessive and inappropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides has polluted waterways, poisoned agricultural workers, and killed beneficial insects and other wildlife.

Green Revolution Impact on Gender Roles

Generated an average 7 percent wage increase for male laborers, while women's wages registered a relative decline.

Why didn't GR help Africa?

The lack of irrigation facilities and that rainfall is very unreliable, while soil fertility is also very low.

Bid-rent Theory

Geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand on real estate changes as the distance towards the Central Business District (CBD) increases.

Capital Intensive

Uses expensive machinery and other inputs. In addition to being capital intensive, it is nearly always labor intensive.

Labor Intensive

Relying on many low-paid migrant workers, to tend and harvest crops.

Factory Farming

A capital-intensive livestock operation in which many animals are kept in close quarters, and bred and fed in a controlled environment.

Aquaculture (aquafarming)

A type of intensive farming. Rather than raising typical farm animals in close quarters with a controlled environment, fish, shellfish, or water plants are raised in netted areas in the sea, tanks, or other bodies of water.

Double Cropping

Planting and harvesting a crop two (or three) times per year on the same piece of land.

Intercropping/Multi-cropping

When farmers grow two or more crops simultaneously on the same field.

Monoculture/Monocropping

Only one crop is grown or one type of animal is raised per season on a piece of land.

Feedlots (CAFOs)

Confined spaces in which cattle and hogs have limited movement, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Agribusiness

Reason for the evolving agricultural landscape. Farms run as corporations, and the globalization of agriculture.

Transnational Corporations

They use large-scale operations that are commercial, highly mechanized, and often use chemicals and biotechnology in raising crops and animals.

Vertical Integration

Ownership of other businesses involved in the steps of producing a particular good.

Economies of Scale

An increase in efficiency to lower the per-unit production cost, resulting in greater profits.

Commodity Chain

A process used by corporations to gather resources, transform them into goods, and then transport them to consumers.

Cool Chains

Transportation networks that keep food cool throughout a trip.

Location Theory

Key component of economic geography, deals with why people choose certain locations for various types of economic activity.

Von Thunen Model

An economic model that suggested a pattern for the types of products that farmers would produce at different positions relative to the market (community) where they sold their goods. Was also the start of location theory.

VT Zone 1

Will be used to produce products that spoil quickly, like fresh fruit, vegetables, and dairy.

VT Zone 2

Would be maintained as a forest, and used for lumber and fuel.

VT Zone 3

Would be used for grains and tubers like wheat or potatoes.

VT Zone 4

One with the cheapest land but highest transportation costs.

Bid-rent Curve

Can be used to determine the starting position for each land use relative to the market, as well as where each land use would end.

Comparative advantage

The ability of an individual or group to carry out a particular economic activity (such as making a specific product) more efficiently than another activity.

Free-Market Economy

Where supply and demand determine the outcome of competition for land-the farmer who will have the greatest profit will pay the most at each location to occupy the land.

Comparative Advantage

Naturally occuring beneficial conditions, that would prompt farmers to plant crops differently from those predicted by Von Thunen's model

Von Thunen Model Assumptions

Main Assumptions were that agricultural land use is formed as concentric circles around the central market; the latter consumes all the surplus production, which must be transported from the rural areas to the market.

5 Criticisms of Von Thunen Model

Been criticized that it does not consider differences in local, physical conditions since it has been developed in an isolated state.

Supply Chain

All the steps required to get a product or service to customers.

Interdependence

The dependence of two or more people or things on each other.

Luxury Crops

Are not essential to human survival but have a high profit margin.

Ways Rich Countries Exploit Poor

Industrial raising of livestock, which is then imported by the wealthy nations.

Neocolonialism

The use of economic, political, and social pressures to control former colonies, can be one way to describe the current state of global food distribution.

Fair Trade

Trade between companies in developed countries and producers in developing countries in which fair prices are paid to the producers.

Fair Trade Movement Principles (5)

(1)Transactions directly between the producer and the importer ensure more money to the producer. (2)Fair price paid promptly to farmers by importers. (3)Decent conditions are provided for laborers. (4)Environmental sustainability that required farmers to use environmentally safe practices. (5)Respect for local culture through shared agricultural techniques with farmers.

Subsidies

Are designed to achieve the goals the government believes are in the best interest of the public.

Infrastructure

Global systems for agriculture would not be possible without this. Includes all means of communications of a country.

Ghana Vision 2020

Vision is to become a middle-income country by 2020 through human development, economic growth, rural development, urban development and an enabling environment.

Land Cover Changes

The study of how land is used and the impact of changing land use.

Farming Pollution

Refers to biotic and abiotic byproducts of farming practices that result in contamination or degradation of the environment and surrounding ecosystems, and/or cause injury to humans and their economic interests.

Desertification

Alteration of the natural vegetation in arid areas causes fertile land to become infertile.

Salinization

Occurs when salts from water used by plants remain in the soil.

Conservation

Uses cover crops, crop rotation, and minimal tilling to produce annual crops.

Terrace Farming

One of the earliest human alterations of the landscape in which farmers build a series of steps into the side of a hill.

Irrigation

The process of applying controlled amounts of water to crops using dams, canals, pipes, sprinkler systems, or other manufactured devices rather than relying on just rainfall, is called irrigation.

Aral Sea - Problems with Irrigation

Contributed a great deal to the disappearance of the Aral Sea to more than half of its original size.

Deforestation

The removal of large tracts of forest.

Slash-N-Burn Agriculture

An early agricultural practice and type of shifting cultivation. Takes place when all vegetation in an area of forest is cut down and burned in a place.

Changing Diets

The changing of the diet of a large number of people to the point of influencing agricultural companies. dispersed. scattered, spread, broken up.

Roles of Women in Agriculture

Rearing poultry and small livestock and growing food crops, they are responsible for some 60% to 80% of food production in developing countries.

Challengnes of GMOs

Focuses mainly on increasing fisheries production and productivity from aquaculture and fisheries resources, both inland and marine.

Blue Revolution

This practice is now the fastest growing form of food production on the planet and responsible for approximately 50 percent of the world's seafood.

Challenges to Aquaculture

Animal wellbeing and food safety are two key challenges for this sector.

Environmental Challenges

Challenges, such as impacts of climate change, loss of biodiversity, over-use of natural resourcesand environmental and health issues.