Chapter 12 | Agriculture: Human-Environment Interaction

Agriculture

The purposeful cultivation of plants or raising of animals to produce goods for survival

Climate region

An area that has similar climate patterns generally based on its latitude and its location on a coast or continental interior

Mediterranean agriculture

An agricultural practice that consists of growing hardy trees and shrubs and raising sheep and goats

Subsistence agriculture

An agricultural practice that provides crops or livestock to feed one’s family and close community using fewer mechanical resources and more people to care for the crops and livestock

Commercial agriculture

An agricultural practice that focuses on producing crops and raising animals for the market for others to purchase

Bid-rent theory

A theory that describes the relationships between land value, commercial location, and transportation (primarily in urban areas) using a bid-rent gradient, or slope; used to describe how land costs are determined

Central business district (CBD)

The central location where the majority of consumer services are located in a city or town because the accessibility of the location attracts these services

Intensive agriculture

An agricultural practice in which farmers expend a great deal of effort to produce as much yield as possible from an area of land

Monocropping

The cultivation of one or two crops that are rotated seasonally

Monoculture

The agricultural system of planting one crop or raising one type of animal annually

Crop rotation

The varying of crops from year to year to allow for the restoration of valuable nutrients and the continuing productivity of the soil

Plantation agriculture

A type of large-scale commercial farming of one particular crop grown for markets often distant from the plantation

Market gardening

A type of farming that produces fruits, vegetables, and flowers and typically serves a specific market or urban area

Mixed crop and livestock systems

A type of farming in which both crops and livestock are raised for profit

Extensive agriculture

An agricultural practice with relatively few inputs and little investment in labor and capital that results in relatively low outputs

Shifting cultivation

The agricultural practice of growing crops or grazing animals on a piece of land for a year or two, then abandoning that land when the nutrients have been depleted from the soil and moving to a new piece of land where the process is repeated

Slash and burn

A method of agriculture in which existing vegetation is cut down and burned off before new seeds are sown; often used when clearing land

Nomadic herding

A type of agriculture based on people moving their domesticated animals seasonally or as needed to allow the best grazing

Transhumance

The movement of herds between pastures at cooler, higher elevations during the summer months and lower elevations during the winter

Domestication

The deliberate effort to grow plants and raise animals, making plants and animals adapt to human demands and using selective breeding to develop desirable characteristics

Foragers

Small nomadic groups who had primarily plant-based diets and ate small animals or fish for protein

Agricultural hearth

An area where different groups began to domesticate plants and animals

Fertile Crescent

A hearth in Southwest Asia that forms an arc from the eastern Mediterranean coast up into what is now western Turkey and then south and east along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to western parts of modern Iran

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of goods and ideas between the Americas, Europe, and Africa that began after Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492

First agricultural revolution

The shift from foraging for food to farming about 11,000 years ago, marking the beginning of agriculture

Second agricultural revolution

A change in farming practices, marked by new tools and techniques, that diffused from Britain and the Low Countries starting in the early 18th century

Enclosure system

A system in which communal lands were replaced by farms owned by individuals, and use of the land was restricted to the owner or tenants who rented the land from the owner

Third agricultural revolution

A shift to further mechanization in agriculture through the development of new technology and advances that began in the early 20th century and continues to the present-day

Genetically modified organisms

A plant or animal with specific characteristics obtained through the manipulation of its genetic makeup

Green revolution

Movement beginning in the 1950s and 1960s in which scientists used knowledge of genetics to develop new high-yield strains of grain crops