Agriculture and Soil Systems

Vocabulary flashcards covering agribusiness, farming types, global agricultural statistics, and soil system storages, inputs, outputs, transfers, and transformations.

Agribusiness

The business of agricultural production including farming, seed supply, breeding, chemicals for agriculture, machinery, food harvesting, distribution, processing, and storage.

Commercial agriculture

Large-scale production of crops and livestock for sale.

Subsistence agriculture

Farming for self-sufficiency to grow enough for a family.

Agricultural Land for Livestock

Approximately $77\%$ of the world's agricultural land devoted to raising animals, including pasture for grazing and cropland devoted to animal feed.

Global Food Production GHG Emissions

Food production is responsible for $25\%$ of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Agricultural Freshwater Withdrawals

Agriculture accounts for $70\%$ of global freshwater withdrawals.

Global Cereal Allocation

Of the $2.7\text{ billion tonnes}$ produced annually, approximately $41\%$ is for human food, $35\%$ for animal feed, and $24\%$ for industrial use, biofuels, seed, or wasted.

Soil Storages

The stores of matter within a soil system, which include organic matter, organisms, nutrients, minerals from underlying rock, air, and water.

Soil Inputs

Matter and energy entering the soil system, including solar energy, organic material (leaf litter, manure, biomass, guano), inorganic parent material, precipitation, gases, air humidity, windblown/waterborne particles, and anthropogenic additions (fertilizer, compost, agrochemicals, irrigation, salinization).

Soil Outputs

Losses from the soil system, including plant uptake, gas diffusion, water evaporation, loss of heat, soil erosion, loss of dead organic matter, wind and water erosion, and leaching.

Soil Transfers

Processes that move matter into, out of, and across soil horizons without chemical changes, including percolation, biological mixing, translocation, leaching, infiltration, groundwater flow, aeration, and erosion.

Translocation

The movement of soil particles in suspension across soil horizons.

Leaching

The process by which minerals dissolved in water move through soil.

Soil Transformations

Processes that alter the whole system or chemical state of soil components, including nutrient cycling, salinization, decomposition, and weathering.