Ch 11: Agriculture

What is agriculture?

the deliberate tending of crops and livestock to produce food, feed, fiber, and fuel.

What is secondary economic activity?

activities that take a primary product and change it into something else like processed food, buildings, and ships.

What is tertiary activity?

service industries that connect producers to consumers and facilitate trade or help people meet their needs.

What is primary economic activity?

extraction of products from the earth like mining, farming, fishing, and gathering.

Explain agriculture in the United States?

• total agriculture production is at an all-time high, but the proportion of the labor force in agriculture is at an all-time low.

• less than 2% of the workforce is involved in agricultural production.

• the average size of farms or acres in production has been growing.

What are the four major issues that affect global food security?

1. Varying abilities to balance production and consumption across places.

2. Accelerating conversions of agricultural land to urban uses.

3. Increasingly energy-intensive food production methods in a shrinking fossil fuel resources.

4. Expanding use of food crops for biofuel production.

What is hunting, fishing, and gathering?

• before agriculture

• most common means of subsistence in the world

• varied based on resources and climate

• in areas of abundance, meant that it could support more people.

What are root crops?

crops that are reproduced by cultivating the cuttings or roots from other plants.

What is the first agricultural revolution?

the cultivation of seed crops in the Fertile Crescent

What are seed crops?

plants that are reproduced by cultivating seeds.