AP Human Geography: Unit 5 Key Terms

Agribusiness: The set of economic and political relationships that organize food production for commercial purposes. It includes activities ranging from seed production, to retailing, to consumption of agricultural products. 

Agriculture: The art and science of producing food from the land and tending livestock for the purpose of human consumption. 

Animal husbandry: An agricultural activity associated with the raising of domesticated animals, such as cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. 

Aquaculture: The cultivation or farming (in controlled conditions) of aquatic species, such as fish. In contrast to commercial fishing, which involves catching wild fish. 

Biotechnology: A form of technology that uses living organisms, usually genes, to modify products, to make or modify plants and animals, or to develop other microorganisms for specific purposes. 

Capital-intensive agriculture: Form of agriculture that uses mechanical goods, such as machinery, tools, vehicles, and facilities, to produce large amounts of agricultural goods—a process requiring very little human labor. 

Commercial agricultural economy: All agricultural activity generated for the purpose of selling, not necessarily for local consumption. 

Commodity chains: A linked system of processes that gather resources, convert them into goods, package them for distribution, disperse them, and sell them on the market. 

Dairying: An agricultural activity involving the raising of livestock, most commonly cows and goats, for dairy products such as milk, cheese, and butter. 

Desertification: The process by which formerly fertile lands become increasingly arid, unproductive, and desert-like. 

Domestication: The conscious manipulation of plant and animal species by humans in order to sustain themselves. 

Extensive agriculture: An agricultural system characterized by low inputs of labor per unit land area. 

Feedlots: Places where livestock are concentrated in a very small area and raised on hormones and hearty grains that prepare them for slaughter at a much more rapid rate than grazing; often referred to as factory farms. 

Fertile crescent: Area located in the crescent-shaped zone near the southeastern Mediterranean coast (including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey), which was once a lush environment and one of the first hearths of domestication and thus agricultural activity. 

Food security: People’s ability to access sufficient safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. 

Genetically modified foods: Foods that are mostly products of organisms that have had their genes altered in a laboratory for specific purposes, such as disease resistance, increased productivity, or nutritional value, allowing growers greater control, predictability, and efficiency. 

Green Revolution: The development of higher-yield and fast-growing crops through increased technology, pesticides, and fertilizers transferred from the developed to developing world to alleviate the problem of food supply in those regions of the globe.