Agriculture

Subsistence Farming

A type of farming where farmers produce enough food for themselves and their families without entering the cash economy.

Commercial Farming

A type of farming that is large and specialized, aimed at national and international consumption.

Shifting Cultivation

A farming practice involving 'slash and burn' techniques and moving fields to find better land.

• common

Pastoralism

A form of agriculture focused on raising livestock that can be sedentary, nomadic, or semi-nomadic.

• domesticated animals are released onto the vegetated land where they graze and feed

• nomadic people who move with herds

• in places where climates make crop growing near impossible

Wet Rice Farming

A method of rice cultivation that is water-intensive and practiced in paddy fields.

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

• grown to be seedling and then moved into flooded paddy fields

• Asia

Intensive Agriculture

Farming with high labor and investment relative to land size, often involving complex systems.

• farming practice that maximizes yields from a area through high levels of labor, fertilizers and tech

• increase labor → increase yields

• found in developing countries — subsistence farming

Extensive Agriculture

Farming that utilizes less labor and investment relative to the size of the land used.

• low inputs of labor per unit of land

• large area of land that is used to make more food, but less labor

• high land and low labor per unit of land

• increase land size → increase yield

First Agricultural Revolution

The transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture about 12,000 years ago.

• human first began domesticating plants and animals → no more reliance on hunting and gathering

Second Agricultural Revolution

Occurred alongside the Industrial Revolution, it introduced technology such as seed drills and mechanical reapers.

Third Agricultural Revolution (Green Revolution)

A period of significant agricultural development in the 20th century resulting in higher crop yields through genetic improvements.

• large increase in crop production in developing countries

• fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yield crop varieties

Organic Agriculture

Farming that avoids the use of GMOs and synthetic chemicals to maintain environmental balance.

Gene Revolution

The development and use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture.

Plantation Agriculture

Large commercial farms in less developed countries focusing on producing cash crops for export.

• human led cultivation of plants and animals in which a single type of crop is grown on a large area of land

Commercial Livestock Farming

Farming focused on the production of livestock, with systems like dry-lot dairies and ranching.

Cadastral Survey

A systematic documentation of property ownership and mapping of land.

Von Thunen Model

A model developed to explain the location of agricultural activities based on proximity to a city center.

• patterns in the distance between central markets and growing crops

• the farthest crops being the least perishable and the closest being the most perishable

• agriculture exists in concentric patterns around a city → cost of farming per ring depends on the cost of goods and transportation

Bid-Rent Theory

The concept that land prices decrease as the distance from the city center increases.

genetically modified organisims

A living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotech

• passed through a genetic change to create a more sustainable product

desertification

Degragation of land, especially in semiaric areas. Due to human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing and tree cutting.

• when vegetation disappeared in semi-arid and aird areas

CAFOs

Confined animal feeding operation

• agricultural meat, dairy, or egg facilities

• animals are raised in confinement

• raising animals for slaughter efficiently in small living conditions

Environmental racism

disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, pollution and degradation on marginalized communities.

Dry lot dairy

fenced in dairy farms free of vegetation and free range

• used for large commercial farms

• factory farms

food deserts

an area limited to affordable and nutritious foods

• lack of access

deforestation

large scale destruction of forests

milksheds

milksheds are regions surroudnings a milk source that milk is supplied to without spoiling

metes and bounds

A system of describing land boundaries by using natural features like rivers, streams, large trees, and man-made markers. Define and precise perimeters of properties and usually end in an irregularly shaped land.

township and range

cadastral cuervey method that divides the land into squares to be further divided into squares

• division of rural areas west of the Appalachians into squares

long lots

French long lot system is a method of dividing land into narrow strips that ran parallel to a sources of mater

crop rotation

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

norman borlaug

Norman Borlaug was an agricultural scientist who is credited with starting the Green Revolution that sought to end world hunger through cross-breeding and the introduction of pesticides.

mediterranean agriculture

crops grown in the mediterranean region of Europe

• bordering te sea, breezes, moderate temperatures, hilly land

• crops grown on trees primarily

mixed crop/livestock

agricultural system where farmers grow crops and raise animals on the same farm

transhumance

the seasonal migration of livestock and the people who tends them.

• between the lowlands and the adjacent mountains

• seasonal movement of livestock between different grazing areas

ranching

commercial grazing of livestock over an extensive area

• livestock for the purpose of producing food commercially

• cattle ranching and horse ranching

market/truck farming

commericial gardening and fruit farming

• called truck bc truck means bartering

commercial dairy farming

A farm that specializes in the production of milk and other dairy products

commercial grain farming

grain farming on a large scale

terrace farming

method of growing crops on the side of a hill by planting terraces that are built onto a slope