Agricultural

Agriculture

Growing of plants or raising of animals

Relief

A farmer looks at the shape of the field, or its relief, which includes its slope and altitude. The degree to which the feild gets sunlight.

Mediterranean Agriculture

Primarily associated with the region near the mediterranean sea and inculdes other places with climates that have hot, dry summers, and wet, mild winters.

Intensive farming practices

Involve higher amounts of labor, capital (farming machinery, pesticides, and technology), and crop yeild per unit of farmland, often colse to the market or home where the products will be sold or consumed.

Market Gardening

Occurs on a small scale where the farmer grows fresh vegetables, fruits, flowers, and other perishable goods for customers to buy directly or at a nearby market.

Mixed crop and livestock systems

Involove a farmer that grows crops and rasies animals. Most crops are used to feed other animals and most income comes from sale of animals products. This will reduce a mixed crop and livestock farmer’s complete dependence on the seasonal harvest.

Plantation Agriculture

Involoves large scale farming operartions known as plantations or agricultural estates that specialize in the farming of one or two high demand crops for export, usually to more developed regions. Introduced in tropical and subtropical zones by European Colonizers. Largely reflective of global power structures. Still labor intestive and requires large numbers of workers.

Extensive Agricultural Practices

Involove lower amounts of labor capital, and crop yield per unit are of farmland, often in areas more distant from the market where the products will be sold or consumed. extensive = lower density of agricultural density.

Ranching

Commiercial grazing, or the raising of animals on a plot of land on which they graze. Usually extensive requiring lots of lands. Commo in the tropical deciduous forest regions on the west coast of Latin America.

Nomadic Herding

A form of Subsitance agriculture involoving the breeding and hearding of animals to produce food, shelter, and clothing for survival. Usually practiced in climates with very limited, arable land. Involoves herding of cattle, sheep, camels, and goats. Confined to less and less land.

Transhumance

The movement of animals herds to cooler highland areas in the summer to warmer, lowland areas in the winter.

Subsistence Agriculture

Decling worldwide

Bid-rent Theory

Explains part of intensive and extensive farming practices. In short, it predicts the cost of land, inculding farmland, increases as you get closer to the center of the city.

Surveying

Refers to the methos used to determine property lines. Changes as technology changed and develops.

Metes and bounds survey methods

Defined property (and village/political region) lines around natural landscape features. These methofs were used in eaerly villages.

Township and range survey methods

Developed to determine latitude and lonitude on land. It was first developed in maritime technology. These methods result in property patterns that are rectangular and linear, folling lines of latitude and longitude.

Long lot survey methods

Found in places settled by the French, like Quebec and Lpuisiana, created rural property definitions that were long and narrow, positioned by a waterway.

Hearth

Places of origin

The First Agricultural Revolution

Saw the human development of seed agriculture and the use of animals in the farming process about 12,000 years ago. Growht of seed agriculture and use of animals replaced hunting and gathering and the nomatic lifestyle. Human groups were able to stay in one place. Knowledge diffused outwardly from each hearth through trade and travel.

The Columbian Exchange

Refers to the diffusion of animals, plants, technology, diseases, and aspects of culture and power in areas of the world during the era of Christopher Colombus. This contributed to the changing agricultural practices throughout the world.

Monoculture

develops when a farm area produces the same crop over and over again, with little crop diversity. This makes the crops more susceptible to infestations and harmful organisms. Also associated with the shift to commercial agriculture as people producing the agricultural product are no longer doing so for consumption but to sell at a market.

The Second Agricultural Revolution

Coincided with the Industrial Revolution in 17th and 18th century England. Massive Urban migration which increased the demand for food. This demand led to new invotions in farming and transportation technology that dramatically increases crop and livestock yields. Improved farm technology supported higher farming outputs which led to imroved diets and life expectancy.

The Third Agricultural Revolution

The green revolution

The Green Revolution

Began in the 1940s. New strains of hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and mechanized farming methods were invented that dramatically increased the crop output. Began with arcricultural expierements meant to improve Mexico’s wheat grain production capabilities. Scientists developed new fertilizers and pestisides that supported the higher-yoelding seeds that required special nitrogen-emriching fertilizers and increased protection gtom diseases.

Subsistence farming

When a farmer can grow only enough food to feed his/her own family. In many less developed regions of the world, people are subsistence.

Commercial farming

refers to farmers who grow food to be uwssed in groceries and markets, not just to be eaten by the farmers themselves.

Agribusiness

The modern system of food production which combines all the pieces of the food production industry: the development of seeds, the farms, fertilizer laboratories, processing plants, packagers, distributors, and the marketing and scale of food products.

Complex commodity chain

A sequence of locations interlinking the places where raw materials are extracted, factories where the food is processed, centers where it is packaged, and markets where it is sold to homes and businesses where the food is processed, centers where it is packaged, and markets where it is sold to homes and businesses where the food is consumed.

Economies of scale

Farmers can create more agricultural products for lass cost- the higher the output, the less the cost.

The green revolution

Began in the 1940s. New strains of hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and mechanized farming methods were invented that dramatically increased crop output. It started with agricultural experiments aimed at improving Mexico’s wheat grain production.

Agricultural Biotechnology

Agricultural Biotechnology

The use of scientific tools and techniques to modify plants, animals, and micro-organisms for agricultural purposes.

What is Regular Agriculture?

Agriculture characterized by standard farming practices that follow conventional methods, prioritizing efficiency and crop yield.

Export

Import

Export commodity dependency

Soil Erosion

Desertification

Land cover

Soil Salinization

Shifting Cultivation

Crop Rotation

Slash-and-burn agriculture

Interillage

Fallow

Pastoralism

Deforestation

Terrace farming

Irrigation Practices

Wetlands

Debt-for-nature swaps

Food insecurity

Food deserts

Agricultural biotechnology

Genetic Modification

GMO

Aquaculture

Organic farming

Fair trade movements

“Eat Local” movements

Urban farming

Community-supported agriculture (CSA)

Value-added specialty

Dietary shifts

Gender Gap