GSCU 2200 - Agricultural Exam 2

Agribusiness

A large-scale commercial system combining agricultural production, chemical inputs, processing, machinery manufacturing, distribution, and corporate retail sales.

Agriculture

The purposeful human modification of Earth's surface through crop cultivation and animal raising to produce food, fiber, and economic goods.

Bid-Rent Theory

An economic model explaining that land value and rental costs drop as distance from the central market increases, dictating intensive versus extensive land use.

Commercial Agriculture

An agricultural system where crops and livestock are produced primarily for sale, financial profit, and off-farm distribution.

Commodity Chain

A complex spatial network linking places of raw agricultural production with processing factories, transportation hubs, and retail distribution centers.

Crop Rotation

The agricultural practice of sequentially planting different crops on the same plot across seasons to maintain soil fertility and break pest cycles.

Extensive Agriculture

Farming practices characterized by low inputs of labor, capital, and technology relative to the vast land area used, producing lower yields per hectare.

Fertile Crescent

A historic agricultural hearth in Southwest Asia where wheat, barley, sheep, and goats were first domesticated.

First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution)

The prehistoric transformation roughly 10,000 years ago when human societies shifted from nomadic foraging to settled farming and animal domestication.

Food Desert

An urban or rural neighborhood lacking access to fresh, affordable, and healthy groceries.

Food Insecurity

The lack of reliable physical, social, or economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to support a healthy lifestyle.

Food Security

Reliable physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs for an active life.

Green Revolution (Third Agricultural Revolution)

A mid-20th-century scientific research initiative that boosted global food production by introducing High-Yielding Varieties of seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and modern irrigation.

Infrastructure

The fundamental physical structures and systems, such as paved roads, railways, grain elevators, irrigation networks, and power grids, needed to support an economy.

Intensive Agriculture

Agricultural practices requiring high inputs of labor, capital, fertilizers, or technology relative to smaller land plots to maximize crop yield per acre.

Market Gardening (Truck Farming)

The intensive commercial production of high-value, highly perishable fruits, vegetables, and flowers close to urban markets for quick distribution.

Mixed Crop and Livestock Systems

An integrated commercial farming system where both crops and farm animals are raised on the same farm, allowing crops to feed animals and animal manure to fertilize fields.

Monocropping & Monoculture

Monocropping is cultivating a single commercial crop continuously on the same land year after year; monoculture is dedicating an entire farm or region to raising a single plant or animal species.

Nomadic Herding (Pastoral Nomadism)

An extensive subsistence farming practice where herd animals are driven across dry or cold non-arable lands in search of natural pastures.

Plantation Agriculture

A large-scale intensive commercial farming system located in tropical developing nations that specializes in growing a single cash crop for export to core countries.

Quotas

Strict limits placed by governments on domestic agricultural production or imports to stabilize market prices.

Ranching

An extensive commercial agricultural practice where livestock roam and graze across large, open tracts of arid or semi-arid land.

Second Agricultural Revolution

An industrial-era transformation in farming marked by mechanization, improved tools, new crop rotation methods, enclosed fields, and higher food yields.

Shifting Cultivation

An extensive subsistence agricultural practice in tropical rainforests where farmers clear land, farm it for a few years until soil fertility drops, and then leave it fallow to recover.

Slash and Burn

A specific clearing technique used in shifting cultivation where farmers cut down vegetation and burn the dried debris to enrich poor soil with nutrient-rich ash.

Subsidies

Government payments, low-cost loans, or price guarantees provided to domestic farmers and agribusinesses to ensure food supply stability and income support.

Subsistence Agriculture

An agricultural system that produces a diverse range of crops and livestock primarily for the farmer's family or local community consumption.

Tariffs

Taxes placed by governments on imported agricultural goods to protect domestic farmers from foreign competition.

Transhumance

The seasonal movement of livestock pastoralists between higher mountain pastures in the summer and lower valleys in the winter.

Vertical Integration

A corporate business model in agribusiness where a single company owns and controls multiple or all stages of the agricultural production, processing, and distribution chain.

Von Thünen Model

A spatial economic model created in 1826 predicting that agricultural land-use patterns are determined by land cost and transportation costs relative to a central market.