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Chapter 9
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Agribusiness | Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations |
Agricultural revolution | The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering |
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 that yields grain for food |
Commercial agriculture | Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale of the farm |
Crop | Any plant gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season |
Crop rotation | The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting the soil |
Dairy farm | A form of commercial agriculture that specializes in the production of milk and other dairy products |
Desertification | Degradation on land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions such as excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting, Also known as semiarid land degradation |
Dietary energy consumption | The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in kilocalories |
Double cropping | Harvesting twice a year from the same field |
Fishing | The capture of wild fish and other seafood living in the waters |
Food security | Physical, social, and economic acces 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 grain |
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 characteristics of Asia's major population concentrations 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 untouched on the fields |
Overfishing | Capturing fish faster than they can reproduce |
Paddy | The Malay word for wet rice, increasingly used to describe a flooded field |
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 a relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period |
Slash-and-burn agriculture | Another name for shifting cultivation, so named because fields are cleared by slashing the vegetation and burning debris |
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 plantating through slashing and burning |
Transhumance | The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures |
Truck farming | Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named for the Middle English word truck, 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 planted on dry land in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth |