APHug Unit 5 - Vocab Quiz

Export Commodity

A cash crop that is produced for export to wealthier countries at the expense of crop production for local consumption

Desertification

the process by which land turns into desert

Hinterland

The area surrounding a city

Commercial Agriculture

The primary aim of commercial agriculture is profit maximization. large-scale production of crops and livestock for sale, rather than for personal use

Bid-Rent Theory

Explains how the demand for and price of land decrease as its distance from the central business district increases

Global supply chain

Agribusinesses, organized at the global scale; encompasses all elements of growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food for people

Organic farming

The production of crops and livestock using ecological processes, natural biodiversity, and renewable resources rather than industrial practices and synthetic inputs

Cool chain

The system that uses refrigeration and food-freezing technologies to keep farm produce fresh in climate-controlled environments at every stage of transport from field to retail grocers and restaurants

Commodity chain

A series of links connecting a commodity’s many places of production and distribution

Metes and Bounds

Survey system that uses natural features such as trees, boulders, and streams to delineate property boundaries

The Green Revolution

The U.S.-supported development of high-yield seed varieties that increased the productivity of cereal crops and accompanying agricultural technologies for transfer to less developed countries

Climate

The average pattern of weather over a 30-year period for a particular region

Market gardening

A small-scale farming system in which a farmer plants one to a few acres that produce a diverse mixture of vegetables and fruits, mostly for sale in local and regional markets

Grain farming

The agricultural landscape for grain farming is distinguished by vast fields of grain that can cover hundreds of acres, such as those in the grain belt in the U.S. Northern Plains, where wheat farming is typical.

Subsistence economy

an economic system where people produce their own food and other necessities to survive

Second Agricultural revolution

Period that brought improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, and storage of farm produce that began in the late 1600s and continued through the 1930s

Shifting cultivation

The cultivation of a plot of land until it becomes less productive, typically over a period of about three to five years; when productivity drops, the farmer shifts to a new plot of land that has been prepared by slash-and-burn agriculture