Agriculture and Rural Land Use

agriculture

The deliberate tending of crops and livestock to produce food, feed, fiber, and fuel.

Land Use

Ways people use land for specific purposes, such as agriculture or industry.

Primary Sector Activities

economic activities that are concerned directly with extracting resources from the earth.

Secondary Sector Activities

The portion of the economy concerned with manufacturing useful products through processing, transforming, and assembling raw materials.

Tertiary Sector Activities

The part of the economy that provides services.

Quaternary Sector Activities

Those parts of the economy concerned with research, with the gathering and dissemination of information, and with administration of the other economic activity levels.

Quinary Sector Activities

A sometimes separately recognized subsection of tertiary activity management functions involving highest level decision making in all types of large organizations.

Mediterranean Climate

a climate marked by warm, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. Citrus, olives, grape production.

Tropical Climates

a climate characterized by high temperatures and heavy precipitation during at least part of the year; typical of equatorial regions. Plantation agriculture.

intensive agriculture

any agricultural system involving the application of large amounts of capital and/or labor per unit of cultivated land; may be part of either subsistence or commercial economy

Capital intensive

using more capital than labor in the production process

labor intensive agriculture

employs large numbers of people and requires relatively little capital to produce food

Market Gardening

The small scale production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers as cash crops sold directly to local consumers. Distinguishable by the large diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, during a single growing season. Labor is done manually.

Plantation Agriculture

Production system based on a large estate owned by an individual, family, or corporation and organized to produce a cash crop. Almost all plantations were established within the tropics

mixed crop/livestock systems

a type of farming in which both crops and livestock are raised for profit

Extensive farming

Where small amounts of capital and labour are used in relation to the amount of land being farmed or grazed

shifting cultivation

Ag. practice based on clearing land, burning the cut vegetation, farming the land for a time before moving to a new parcel of land, and allowing the first are to fill in with native vegetation.

nomadic herding

the raising of livestock for food by moving herds from place to place to find pasture and water

Ranching

A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area.

Metes and Bounds

land survey system that relies on descriptions of land ownership and natural features such as streams or trees. Common on the east coast of the US.

Township and Range

A rectangular land division scheme designed by Thomas Jefferson to disperse settlers evenly across farmlands of the U.S. interior. Created the checkerboard pattern seen in much of the US west of the Mississippi.

long-lot survey system

Divided land into narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals. Common in areas where the French settled in North America.

Clustered Settlement

a rural settlement pattern in which residents live in close proximity to one another, with farmland and pasture land surrounding the settlement; also known as a nucleated settlement

Dispersed Settlement

A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.

linear settlement pattern

A settlement pattern in which buildings are arranged in a line, often along a road or river;

Agricultural Hearths

Places where agriculture first developed and originated. Fertile Crescent, Indus River Valley, Southeast Asia, Central America.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages.

First Agricultural Revolution

Dating back 10,000 years, it achieved plant and animal domestication.

Second Agricultural Revolution

1600s Europe, improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, and storage of farm produce. Improved animal breeding, crop rotation, fertilizers.

Green Revolution (Third Agricultural Revolution)

The development of higher-yield and fast-growing crops through increased technology, pesticides, and fertilizers transferred from the developed to developing world to alleviate the problem of food supply in those regions of the globe.

Gene Revolution

The shift, since the 1980s, to greater private and corporate involvement in and control of the research, development, intellectual property rights, and genetic engineering of highly specialized agricultural products, especially crop varieties

subsistence agriculture

Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer's family

Commercial Agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

Sustainable Agriculture

Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil- restoring crops with cash crops and reducing in-puts of fertilizer and pesticides.

Transhumance

The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.

Monocropping (monoculture)

An agricultural method that utilizes large plantings of a single species or variety

crop rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year, to avoid exhausting the soil.

Von Thunen Model

An agricultural model that spatially describes agricultural activity in terms of rent. Activities that require intensive cultivation and cannot be transported over great distances pay higher rent to be close to the market. Conversely, activities that are more extensive , with goods that are easy to transport, are located farther from the market where rent is less.

Bid-Rent Theory

a geographical economic theory to how the price and demand on real estate changes as the distance towards the CBD increases

double cropping

growing more than one crop a year on the same land

Economies of Scale

a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.

Cold Chain

System of harvesting produce that is not quite ripe and ripening it by controlling temperature from the fields to the grocery store.

Commodity chain (supply chain)

The link of products from growth, to processing, to manufacturing of the final product, to distribution of the final product to stores. The global commodity supply chain is the engine that drives modern agribusiness

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

carrying capacity

Largest number of individuals of a population that a environment can support

commodity dependence

economic dependence on exports of agricultural and mineral raw materials

Aquaculture

Raising marine and freshwater fish in ponds and underwater cages

desertificiation

When land turns into desert through erosion and drought. An example of desertification is the loss of land taking place in the Sahel region of western africa

soil salinization

in arid regions, irrigation water evaporates, leaving salts behind

Terraces

steplike ledges cut into mountains to make land suitable for farming

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

A system in which consumers pay farmers in advance for a share of their yield, usually in the form of weekly deliveries of produce.

CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)

large structures where food animals are raised in high densities

Value-added specialty crops

increasing the economic value of a commodity through particular production processes, e.g., organic produce, or through regionally branded products that increase consumer appeal and willingness to pay a premium over similar but undifferentiated products. i.e. free-range chickens, hormone-free beef