Agricultural Practices and Revolutions

Flashcards of vocabulary terms and definitions related to agricultural practices and revolutions.

Primary economy

Timber, fisheries, and mineral and energy resources

Intensive agriculture

Requires lots of labor input, or is focused on a small plot of land, or both

Extensive agriculture

Requires limited labor input, or is spread across large areas of land, or both

Hunting and gathering societies

The earliest forms of agriculture

Transhumance

Where groups move seasonally not only to avoid harsh climates, but also to follow animal herds and walk to areas where native plants were in fruit

Pastoralism

Agriculture based on the seasonal movement of animals from winter to summer pastures and back again

Nomadic herding

A practice where whole communities would drive their herds from one seasonal grazing area to another following an annual cycle that was repeated over centuries

Ranching

Grazing livestock in a single large area

Multi-cropping

If one crop failed or was damaged by pests, another crop would provide a backup food supply, more secure than single-crop monoculture

Monoculture

Became common in the era of early political civilization and empires, when farms produced a staple crop in large order to feed whole societies and armies

Mixed farming, or general farming

Where multiple crops and animals exist on a single farm to provide diverse nutritional intake and non-food items

Subsistence agriculture

Intensive mixed farming that provides for all of the food and material needs of a household

Extensive subsistence agriculture

Occurs when there are low amounts of labor inputs per unit of land

Physiologic density

The number of people per unit of arable land

Food preservation

A necessity for survival for thousands of years via drying, pickling, cooking, and storage jars that has led to many cultural variations in food consumption

Cash-cropping

A form of extensive agriculture in which harvested crops are exchanged for currency, goods, or credit

Farming under communism

Farming done on a non-subsistence basis, with much of the food grown being produced collectively in farm communities and distributed across the country

Farming communes during communism

Large farms where several families were organized as labor units and were assigned quotas by the government

Human ecology

Human interactions with nature

Food chain

The order of predators in the animal world that is used to describe several integrated human and mechanical inputs, from developing seeds to planting, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, packaging, and transporting food to market and finally to your dinner plate

Crop rotation

Occurs when one crop is planted on a plot of land and then switched to another plot in subsequent years

Multi-cropping

The planting of more than one crop on the same plot of land

Double cropping

Planting two crops one after another on a single plot in a year

Triple cropping

Planting three crops in the same year

Irrigation

Opens up more land to cultivation than would normally be possible in arid climates

Aquifers

Underground water tables that gives water to irrigation farms

Conservation

The practice of preserving and carefully managing the environment and its natural resources

Conservation agriculture

An increasingly important way of providing a sustainable farming system without sacrificing crop production

No-tillage

Involves not plowing the soil so that soil erosion is greatly reduced and soil fertility is increased by retaining natural vegetation

Inter-planting

Planting fast-growing crops alongside slow-growing crops, allowing a farmer to harvest the fast-growing crop before the slow-growing crop shades it out

Sustainable yield

The amount of crops or animals that can be raised without endangering local resources such as soil, irrigation, or groundwater, or what can be raised without too many expensive inputs that would make farming unprofitable

Slash and burn agriculture

Occurred in tropical rainforest regions with farmers shifting from one plot of land to another every few years as soil nutrients become depleted

Extensive pastoralism

The shifting of animal herds between grazing pastures, has remained popular in several arid parts of the world, especially Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, where dry grassland is the common landcover

Desertification

Any human process that turns a vegetated environment into a desert-like landscape

Soil salination

The evaporation of water that can trap mineral salts on the surface soil layer.

Hearths of domestication

The areas where most of this early agricultural activity originated

Vegetative planting

Where the shoots, stems, and roots of existing wild plants were collected and grown together

Seed agriculture

Where the fertilized seed grains and fruits of plants were collected and replanted together

Horticulture

Where plant varieties that thrived in different soil or climate conditions were cultivated

The Columbian exchange

Domesticated New World crops that made their way to the rest of the world through relocation diffusion

Green Revolution

Occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when tropical plant and animal hybrids and chemical fertilizers and pesticides began to be used in Third-World agriculture

Third Agricultural Revolution

Marked the start of a more inclusive way of farming and the internationalization of industrialized farming

Corporate agriculture, or agribusiness

Large- scale extensive farms of several thousand acres or several thousand animals that are controlled by a single regional business

Downer cattle

Beef cows that appear ill or are lame and cannot be used for human consumption, but can wind up in pet food or animal feed instead

Non-GMO Foods

Farmers can certify their products as non-GMO and bring a premium price from natural foods processors and consumers looking for the non-GMO label in the U.S. and Canada

Organic Farming

Crops and animals must not be grown using genetic engineering, must be free of pesticides, antibiotics, and synthetic hormones, must not use artificial fertilizers, and must feed on completely organic crops

Poor labor conditions in farming

To maximize profits, some corporations pay producers at the base of the supply chain extremely low wages, forcing them to work long hours in potentially unsafe working conditions

Fair trade movement

Focuses on ensuring that small farmers and artisans are paid a fair price for their products

Aquaculture

Fish farming is a rapidly growing industry that small farmers can engage in and be profitable

Suitcase farmers

Farm owners who have city jobs but still own land in rural areas

Community-supported agriculture (CSA)

Programs in which produce and other farm products are delivered directly to individual consumers

Plantation agriculture

Specialized crops intended for both domestic consumption and for export to other parts of the world

Milkshed

The region around a city to which fresh milk is delivered without spoiling In terms of travel time and distance

Ultra-high temperature (UHT) pasteurization

A new milk preservation method where milk is flash-pasteurized at very high temperatures and under pressure to keep the water in it from turning to steam and then stored in a sterile box container that is sealed in plastic to prevent contamination

Commodity chains

Links between producers and consumers in the journey from raw material to delivery of a finished product

Commodity-dependent

When a single product or type of good accounts for more than 60% of its exports

Von Thünen’s Model

Land use (the type of farming) is determined by how labor intensive the type of farming is

Cost-to-distance relationship

An inverse relationship between the value of labor and the distance from the center of the model; the higher the total labor costs, the closer it is to the center, and the lower the labor costs, the farther it is from the center