HGAP unit 5

Domesticated plant:

A plant that is deliberately planted, protected, cared for, and used by humans and is genetically distinct from its wild ancestors.

Domesticated animal:

An animal that depends on people for food and shelter and is different from its wild ancestors in looks and behavior as a result of close contact with humans.

Physical geography:

The study of Earth’s physical characteristics and processes: how they work, how they affect humans, and how humans affect them.

Nutrients:

Components of topsoil (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) necessary for plants to survive, grow, and reproduce.

Topography:

The arrangement of shapes on Earth’s surface.

Climate:

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

Weather:

The day-to-day atmospheric conditions that affect daily decisions.

Tropical wet climate:

A climate located along the equator that experiences rain every day of the year.

Tropical wet and dry climate:

A climate located along the equator that has a dry season with little to no rain, usually in the winter; is often subject to monsoons.

Monsoon:

Seasonal reversal of winds with a general onshore movement in summer and a general offshore movement in winter; onshore winds bring monsoon rains.

Monsoon rains:

Long periods of heavy rains every day at the end of a short dry season.

Arid climate:

A climate that receives less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain annually.

Semiarid (steppe) climate:

A climate that receives about 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 centimeters) of rain annually that can support farming.

Moderate climate:

A climate with an average year- round temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius); found north and south of the equator on the edges of tropical climates.

Humid subtropical climate:

A climate with long, hot summers and short, mild winters with variable precipitation; found on east coasts of continents.

Marine west coast climate:

A climate found along western coasts of continents closer to the poles; characterized by moderate temperatures during long summers and cool winters.

Mediterranean climate:

A climate with winter precipitation, unusually mild winters, and clear skies with abundant sunshine; found along the Mediterranean Sea and a few coastal regions.

Continental climate:

A climate that has a large range
of temperatures and moderate precipitation; found in the interior of continents, north of the moderate climate zones.

Humid continental climate:

A climate with a wide range of temperatures, moderate precipitation, and four distinct seasons; experiences warm to hot summers, moderate to abundant rainfall (20–50 inches [50–150 centimeters] annually), and cold winters with precipitation falling as snow.

Humid cold climate:

A climate with frigid temperatures nearly year-round; found in northern reaches of the continental climate zone and often described as subarctic.

Intensive agriculture:

Crop cultivation and livestock rearing systems that use high levels of labor and capital relative to the size of the landholding.

Subsistence agriculture:

Food production mainly for consumption by the farming family and local community, rather than principally for sale in the market.

Commercial agriculture:

Farming oriented exclusively toward the production of agricultural commodities for sale in the market.

Market gardening:

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

Truck farm:

A scaled-up version of market gardening, with more acreage, less crop diversity, and a stronger orientation toward more distant markets.

Plantation:

Large landholding devoted to capital- intensive, specialized production of a single tropical or subtropical crop for the global marketplace.

Mixed crop/livestock agriculture:

A diversified system of agriculture based on the cultivation of cereal grains and root crops (such as potatoes and yams) and the rearing of herd livestock.

Cereal grains:

Seeds that come from a wide variety of grasses cultivated around the world, including wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, oats, and maize (corn).

Millet:

A fast-growing cereal plant that is widely grown in warm regions with poor soil.

Root crops:

Vegetables that form below ground and must be dug at maturity, such as cassava, potatoes, and yams.

Cash crops:

Crops raised to be sold for profit rather than to feed the farm family and the livestock; common cash crops are cotton, flax, hemp, coffee, and tobacco.

Peasants:

Small-scale farmers who own their fields, rely chiefly on family labor, and produce both for their own subsistence and for sale in the market.

Paddy rice farming:

A system of wet rice cultivation on small level fields bordered by impermeable dikes; the fields (paddies) are flooded with 4–6 inches (10–15 centimeters) of water for about three-quarters of the growing season.

Grain farming:

A highly mechanized commercial farming system that specializes in the production of cereal grains; requires large farms and widespread use of machinery, synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, and genetically engineered seeds.

Livestock fattening:

An intensive system of animal feeding utilizing fenced enclosures to fatten livestock, mostly cattle and hogs, for slaughter and processing for the market.

Feedlot:

A fenced enclosure used for intensive livestock feeding that serves to limit livestock movement and associated weight loss.

Dairying:

A farming system that specializes in the breeding, rearing, and utilization of livestock (primarily cows) to produce milk and its various by-products, such as yogurt, butter, and cheese.

Extensive agriculture:

Crop cultivation and livestock rearing systems that require little hired labor or monetary investment to successfully raise crops and animals.

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.

Slash-and-burn (swidden) agriculture:

Agriculture that involves cutting small plots in forests or woodlands, burning the cuttings to clear the ground and release nutrients, and planting in the ash of the cleared plot.

Intercropping:

The farming practice of planting multiple crops together in the same clearing.

Nomadic herding (nomadic pastoralism or pastoralism):

A system of breeding and rearing herd livestock, such as cattle, sheep, or goats, by following the seasonal movement of rainfall to areas of open pasturelands.

Tundra:

The vast, flat, treeless arctic region of Europe, Asia, and North America in which the subsoil is permanently frozen.

Livestock ranching:

The practice of using extensive tracts of land to rear herds of livestock to sell as meat, hides, or wool.

Rural area:

Area located outside of towns and cities; all the space, population, and housing not included in an urban area.

Rural settlement:

Small group of people living outside of an urban area.

Agricultural landscape:

The visible imprint of agricultural practices.

Grain elevator:

Large storage facility for grain.

Suitcase farm:

In U.S. commercial grain agriculture regions, a farm on which no one lives; planting and harvesting are done by hired migratory crews.

Settlement patterns:

The ways in which people organize themselves on the land.

Clustered settlement or farm village:

A tightly bunched farm settlement that has anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred inhabitants.

Farmstead:

Center of farm operations, which includes the farmhouse, barns, shed, livestock pens, and family garden.

Dispersed settlement or isolated settlement pattern:

A settlement pattern in which families live relatively distant from one another.

Linear settlement pattern:

A settlement pattern in which buildings are arranged in a line, often along a road or river; limited to areas where legal systems dictated that property lines must be rectangular.

Survey methods:

The methods used by surveyors to lay out property lines.

Cadastral survey:

Systematic documentation of property ownership, shape, use, and boundaries.

Metes and bounds:

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

Township and range:

Land survey system created by the U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785, which divides most of the country’s territory into a grid of square-shaped townships with 6-mile sides.

Long-lot survey system:

A unit-block surveying system whose basic unit is a rectangle that is typically 10 times longer than it is wide.

Domestication:

The long-term process through which humans selectively breed, protect, and care for individuals taken from populations of wild plant and animal species to create genetically distinct species, known as domesticates.

First Agricultural Revolution:

Period during which the early domestication and diffusion of plants and animals and the cultivation of seed crops led to the development of agriculture.

Teosinte:

Large wild grass native to Mexico that produced the small ears of maize (corn) that were a favored food among early groups in Mesoamerica.

Mesoamerica:

The cultural region in the Americas that includes the diverse civilizations in the modern-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

Biodiversity:

The variety and variability among species and ecosystems.

Hearth:

A center where innovations or new practices develop and from which the innovations or new practices spread or diffuse.

Fertile Crescent:

Area in Southwest Asia that includes the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; the earliest center for domestication of seed plants.

Indus River valley

: Area along the Indus River that flows from the highlands of Tibet and continues down along the border between present-day Pakistan and India; a site of the earliest domestication of plants and herd animals.

Columbian Exchange:

The interaction and widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, disease, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

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.

Seed drill:

A machine for planting seeds in a row.

Scythe:

An agricultural hand tool with a curved blade used for cutting grain in the fields.

Mechanical reaper:

A machine used to harvest grain crops mechanically; patented by Cyrus McCormick in 1831.

Agrichemicals:

Chemical compounds obtained from petroleum and natural gas for use in agriculture; agrichemicals include fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

Synthetic fertilizer:

Industrially manufactured nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, made from petroleum by-products; contains higher concentrations of nutrients for plants than natural fertilizers.

Pesticide:

Material used to kill or repel animals or insects that can damage, destroy, or inhibit crop growth.

Herbicide:

Pesticide designed to kill or inhibit the growth of unwanted plants (weeds) that compete with crops.

Nutrient pollution:

Consequence of overuse of fertilizer; occurs when excess nutrients seep down into ground- water or are carried into nearby waterways as runoff.

Runoff:

The flow of rain or irrigation water over land.

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.

Crossbreeding

: The act of mixing different species or varieties of plants or animals to produce hybrids.

Hybrid:

The offspring of two plants or animals of different species or varieties.

Double-cropping:

Planting another crop on the same plot of land as soon as the first crop has been harvested.

Multicropping:

Planting two or three crops per year on the same land.

Hierarchical diffusion:

Occurs when ideas leapfrog from one important person, community, or city to another, bypassing other persons, communities, or rural areas.

Cassava:

A root vegetable native to South America.

Sorghum:

A grain plant native to northeast Africa.

Endemic:

Native to or characteristic of a certain environment.

Environmental contamination:

Chemical residue that builds up with each application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Soil salinization:

The concentration of dissolved salts in the soil.

Soil salinity:

A measure of the concentration of dissolved salts in the soil; high soil salinity results from poor irrigation practices.

Capital expenditures:

Assets that cost money, such as land, machinery, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, seeds, and livestock feed.

Bid-rent theory:

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

Central business district (CBD):

A dense cluster of offices and shops located at a city’s most accessible point, usually its center.

Large-scale commercial operation:

A large-scale farm oriented exclusively toward the production of agricultural commodities for sale in the market.

Monocropping (monoculture):

The cultivation of a single commercial crop on extensive tracts of land.

Agricultural cooperative:

An organization where farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activity such as services or production; services or production resources are provided to individual farm members.

Family farm:

A farming operation wholly owned by a family or family corporation that sells its products to some defined market, either directly or through a cooperative.

Commodity:

In agriculture, a primary product that can be bought and sold, such as coffee, rice, or milk.

Commodity chain:

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

Agribusiness:

Large corporation that provides a vast array of goods and services to support the agricultural industry.