Agriculture Unit 5 Vocabulary

Agribusiness: The system of commercial farming that includes all the steps in producing food, from the development of seeds and fertilizers to the processing and marketing of finished products. It integrates various aspects of the food-production industry.

Agricultural revolution: Significant changes in agriculture that occurred at various points in history. The First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution) involved the domestication of plants and animals. The Second Agricultural Revolution coincided with the Industrial Revolution and increased agricultural productivity through mechanization. The Third Agricultural Revolution (Green Revolution) focused on increased crop yields through scientific advancements.

Agriculture: The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain.  

Aquaculture/aquafarming: The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions.

Cereal grain: A grass yielding grain for food.

Commercial agriculture: Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

Crop: Any plant cultivated by people.

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

Dairy Farm: A farm that produces milk or milk products, and are usually located near urban centers.

Desertification: Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions such as excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting.  

Dietary energy consumption: The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in kilocalories (calories in the United States).  

Double cropping: Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Fishing: The activity of catching fish, either for food or for sport.

Food security: Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.  

Genetically modified organism (GMO): A living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology.  

Grain: Seed of a cereal grass.

Green revolution: Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yield seeds and fertilizers.

Horticulture: The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Intensive subsistence agriculture: A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expend a relatively large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land.  

Milkshed: The area surrounding a city from which milk is supplied.

Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming: Commercial farming characterized by integration of crops and livestock; most of the crops are fed to animals rather than consumed directly by humans.  

No tillage: A farming practice that leaves all of the soil undisturbed and the entire residue of the previous year's harvest left on the soil surface.  

Overfishing: Capturing fish at a faster rate than they can reproduce.

Paddy: The Malay word for wet rice, commonly but incorrectly used to describe a sawah.

Pastoral nomadism: A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.

Plantation: A large farm in tropical and subtropical climates that specializes in the production of one or two crops for sale, usually to a more developed country.  

Prime agricultural land: The most productive farmland.

Ranching: A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area.

Ridge tillage: A system of planting crops on ridge tops, in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.  

Sawah: A flooded field for growing rice.

Shifting cultivation: A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another; each field is used for crops for relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.  

Slash-and-burn agriculture: A farming technique in which trees are cut down and burned to clear and fertilize the land.

Subsistence agriculture: Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer's family.  

Swidden: A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Transhumance: The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.

Truck farming: Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning "barter" or "exchange of commodities."  

Undernourishment: Dietary energy consumption that is continuously below the minimum requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out light physical activity.  

Wet rice: Rice grown in flooded fields.

Biotechnology: The use of living organisms or their components (such as cells, enzymes, or genes) to produce useful products.

Chaff: Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.

Combine: A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.

Conservation agriculture: A farming system that aims to conserve resources, such as soil and water, by minimizing soil disturbance, maintaining a permanent soil cover, and diversifying crop rotations.

Enclosure System: The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.  

First Agricultural Revolution: The origin of farming, marked by the first domestications of plants and animals.

Feedlot: An area or establishment where livestock are fed and fattened.

Hull: The outer covering of a seed.

Hunting and Gathering: The killing of wild animals and fish as well as the gathering of fruits, roots, nuts, and other plants for sustenance.  

Intertillage: The planting of crops between rows of existing crops.

Long Lot Survey System: Land is divided into narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals.

Metes and Bounds System: A system of land surveying east of the Appalachian Mountains. It is a system that relies on descriptions of land ownership and natural features such as streams or trees.  

Monoculture: The agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time.  

Organic farming: Farming that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost, and biological pest control.

Pasture: Grass or other plants grown for feeding grazing animals, as well as land used for grazing.

Polyculture: Growing several crops on the same field simultaneously.

Primary economic activity: Economic activity concerned with the direct extraction of natural resources from the environment—such as mining, fishing, lumbering, and especially agriculture.  

Reaper: A machine that cuts cereal grain standing in a field.

Rectangular Survey System: A survey system that divides land into rectangles, used after the Land Ordinance of 1785 to encourage homesteading.

Sauer, Carl (cultural landscape/person): A geographer who defined the concept of cultural landscape as the area modified by human habitation. He focused on the role of humans in transforming the natural landscape through agriculture and other activities.

Second Agricultural Revolution: Dovetailing with and benefiting from the Industrial Revolution, it witnessed improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, and storage of farm produce.  

Sedentary: Settled, non-migratory.

Shifting agriculture: (same as 317) A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another; each field is used for crops for relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.  

Specialty farming: Farming that grows crops to sell for cash, that are in high demand by more affluent customers.

Spring Wheat: Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer or early fall.

Sustainable Agriculture: Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil-restoring crops with cash crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.  

Threshing: The separation of grain from chaff.

Township and Range System: A rectangular land survey system dividing land into townships and sections, used to organize settlement in much of the United States.

Urban subsistence farming: Growing food within cities for personal or local consumption, addressing food insecurity.

Vertical integration: Single-company control of multiple stages in food production, from farming to distribution.

Winnowed: Separating grain from chaff by blowing air through it.

Winter Wheat: Wheat planted in autumn and harvested in early summer, adapted to colder climates.