Agricultural and Rural Land Use Patterns and Processes Part 1 Flashcards
Agriculture
The process by which humans alter the landscape in order to raise crops and livestock for consumption and trade.
Climate
The long-term weather patterns in a region.
Subsistence Agriculture
The primary goal of subsistence agriculture is to grow enough food or raise enough livestock to meet the immediate needs of the farmer and his or her family.
Commercial Agriculture
The primary goal of the commercial farmer is to grow enough crops or raise enough livestock to sell for profit.
Intensive Agriculture
Practices in which farmers or ranchers use large amounts of inputs, such as energy, fertilizers, labor, or machines, to maximize yields.
Extensive Agriculture
Practices that use fewer amounts of the inputs and typically result in less yields.
Intensive Commercial Agriculture
Heavy investments in labor and capital are used in this type of agriculture which often results in high yields and profits.
Intensive Subsistence Agriculture
This form of agriculture is often labor and animal intensive.
Extensive Subsistence Agriculture
Few inputs are used in this type of agricultural activity. It is often practiced in areas that have climatic extremes such as tropical, semi-arid, or arid regions.
Extensive Commercial Agriculture
This type of farming uses low inputs of resources but has the goal of selling the product for profit.
Capital
The money invested in land, equipment, and machines.
Pastoral Nomadism
This type of subsistent extensive agriculture is practiced in arid and semi-arid climates throughout the world. Nomads rely on the animals for survival. Pastoral nomads move their herds to different pastures within their territory and often trade meat for crops with nearby subsistence farmers.
Shifting Cultivation
In this type of subsistent extensive farming, farmers grow crops on a piece of land for a year or two. When the soil loses fertility, they move to another field.
Plantation
A large commercial farm that specializes in one crop.
Mixed Crop and Livestock Farming
Large-scale mixed crop and livestock farming is an intensive commercial integrated system that demonstrates an interdependence between crops and animals. On these farms, the majority of the crops are grains that are eaten by the livestock—to fatten cattle for slaughter or to feed dairy cows. The animals’ manure is, in turn, used to help fertilize crops.
Grain Farming
In regions too dry for mixed crop agriculture, farmers often raise wheat.
Commercial Gardening
Gardening on a larger scale to produce food in bulk.
Market Gardening
When fruits and vegetables are grown near an urban market and sold to local suppliers, stores, and/or restaurants.
Dairy Farming
Traditionally, dairies were local farms that supplied products to customers in a small geographic area. Because of improvements in refrigeration and transportation, large corporate diary operations replaced smaller family-owned farms in more-developed regions of the world, which resulted in fewer farms but more production.
Milk Shed
The geographic distance that milk is delivered.
Mediterranean Agriculture
Practiced in regions with hot, dry summers, mild winters, narrow valleys, and often some irrigation. Common crops include figs, dates, olives, and grapes. Transhumance is often practiced, and goats and sheep are the principal livestock.
Transhumance
The seasonal herding of animals from higher elevations in the summer to lower elevations and valleys in the winter.
Livestock Ranching
The commercial grazing of animals confined to a specific area.
Clustered (Nucleated) Settlements
Settlements that have groups of homes located near each other in a village and foster a strong sense of place and often share services, such as schools.
Dispersed Settlements
Patterns in which farmers live in homes spread throughout the countryside.
Linear Settlement
Buildings and human activities are organized close to a body of water or along a transportation route.
Metes and Bounds
Plot boundaries were described using this system. Metes were used for short distances and often referred to features of specific points. Bounds covered larger areas and were based on larger features, such as streams or roads.
Public Land Survey System/Township and Range System
Created rectangular plots of consistent size. The government organized land into townships. Each square mile, or section, consisted of 640 acres, and it could be divided into smaller lots, such as half sections or quarter sections.
Townships
Areas six miles long and six miles wide.
Section
A square mile of a township.
French Long-Lot System
Farms were long, thin sections of land that ran perpendicular to a river. This was developed so that many farmers could have some river frontage.
First (Neolithic) Agricultural Revolution
The origin of farming, marked by the domestication of plants and animals.
Animal Domestication
The process whereby a population of animals, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control.
Plant Domestication
The process by which wild plants are cultivated into productive crops, often with more desirable traits.
Fertile Crescent
The first major hearth of agriculture.
Independent Innovation
Crops and animals are domesticated in multiple regions with seemingly no interaction among people.
Columbian Exchange
The global movement of plants and animals between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas.
Second Agricultural Revolution
Used the advances of the Industrial Revolution to increase food supplies and support population growth. This began in the 1700s.
Enclosure Acts
A series of laws enacted by the British government that enabled landowners to purchase and enclose land for their own use.
Crop Rotation
The technique of planting different crops in a specific sequence on the same plot of land in order to restore nutrients back into the soil.
Irrigation
The process of applying controlled amounts of water to crops using canals, pipes, sprinkler systems, or other human-made devices, rather than to rely on just rainfall.
Third Agricultural Revolution
Born out of science, research, and technology, and it continues today. This revolution expanded mechanization of farming, developed new global agricultural systems, and used scientific and information technologies to further previous advances in agricultural production.
Green Revolution
The advances in plant biology of the mid-20th century.
Hybridization
The process of breeding two seeds that have desirable characteristics to produce a single seed with both characteristics.
Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)
A process by which humans use engineering techniques to change the DNA of a seed.
Bid-Rent Theory
The closer the land is to an urban center, the more valuable it is. The farmer willing to pay the highest price will gain possession of the land. Consequently, the farmer must use intensive agricultural practices to turn a profit on the land closest to market.
Capital Intensive
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.
Labor Intensive
An industry for which labor costs comprise a high percentage of total expenses.
Factory Farming
A capital-intensive livestock operation in which many animals are kept in close quarters, and bred and fed in a controlled environment.
Aquaculture (Aquafarming)
A type of intensive farming. Rather than raising typical farm animals in close quarters with a controlled environment, fish, shellfish, or water plants are raised in netted areas in the sea, tanks, or other bodies of water.
Double Cropping
Planting and harvesting a crop two times per year on the same piece of land.
Intercropping (Multicropping)
When farmers grow two or more crops simultaneously on the same field.
Monoculture
Only one crop is grown or one type of animal is raised per season on a piece of land.
Monocropping
Also known as continuous monoculture, this is only growing one type of crop or raising one type of animal year after year.
Feedlots
Confined spaces in which cattle and hogs have limited movement, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
