AP Human Geography Unit 5 Vocab

Agriculture vocab for unit 5

Agriculture

Deliberate effort to modify a portion of the Earth’s surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance/economic gain.

Hunters and Gatherers

Small groups with low population density, limited material culture, and no permanent settlements.

Primary Economic Sector

Extraction of resources (ex: mining).

Secondary Economic Sector

Manufacturing or processing goods (ex: car manufacturing).

Tertiary Economic Sector

Service industry (ex: waiters, baristas).

Subsistence Agriculture (LDC)

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

Types of Agriculture for LDC (Subsistence)

Shifting cultivation, slash and burn, pastoral nomadism, and intensive wet rice.

Types of Agriculture for MDC (Commercial)

Dairy, grain, livestock, mediterranean, commercial gardening, aquaculture, and plantation.

Luxury Crop

Non-subsistence crops such as tea, cacao, coffee, and tobacco. Also includes crops not necessary for daily living (ex: bananas and flowers).

Intensive Agriculture

A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expand a relatively large amunt of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land.

Extensive Agriculture

Practiced in areas of relatively low population density, with generally very low inputs of chemicals, water, and soil. Requires a low amount of land.

Green 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.

Supply Chain

A network of people and activities that help move a product from start to consumption by the end user.

Agribusiness

Expansion of agriculture and other levels of economy (ex: primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary).

Feedlots

A plot of land in which livestock are fattened for market (ex: limited mobility, hormones, and increased antibiotics).

Von Thunen’s Model

Farmers compare 2 costs: the cost of land, and the cost of transportation.

Von Thunen’s Model Rings

1: Market Gardening and Dairy. 2: Forest. 3: Extensive Crop Fields. 4: Ranching, Livestock, and Grazing.

Aquaculture

The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions.

Cereal Grain

A grass that yields grain for food.

Chaff

Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.

Commercial Agriculture (MDC)

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

Crop

Any plant gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season.

Crop Rotation

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

Desertification

Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting. also known as semiarid land degradation.

Dietary Energy Consumption

The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in kilocalories (calories in the US).

Double Cropping

Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Food Security

Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Grain

Seed of a cereal grass.

Horticulture

The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Paddy

The Malay word for wet rice, commonly but incorrectly used to describe a sawah.

Pasture

Grass of other plants grown for feeding grazing animals, as well as land used for grazing.

Plantation

A large farm in tropical and subtropical climates that specializes in the production of one or two crops for sale, usually to a more developed country.

Ridge Tillage

A system of planting crops on the ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.

Sawah

A flooded field for growing rice.

Shifting Cultivation

A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another, each field is used for crops for a relatively few years adn left to fallow for a relatively long period.

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 inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.

Swidden

A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Transhumance

The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.

Undernourishment

Dietary energy consumption that is continuously below the minimum requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out light physical activity.

Wet Rice

Rice planted on dry land in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth.