Chapter 10 Flashcards
Agribusiness
Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.
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.
Cereal grain
A grass yielding grain for food.
Chaff
Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.
Combine
A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans gram while moving over a field.
Commercial agriculture
Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.
Crop
Grain or fruit 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.
Desertification
Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting.
Double cropping
Harvesting twice a year from the same field.
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.
Hull
The outer covering of a seed
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.
Paddy
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.
Pasture
Grass or other plants grown for feeding grazing animals, as well as land used for grazing.
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 agriculture land
the most productive farmland
Ranching
A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area
Reaper
A machine that cuts grain standing in the field.
Ridge tillage
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
Another name for shifting cultivation, so named because fields are cleared by slashing the vegetation and burning the debris.
Spring wheat
Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer.
Subsistence agriculture
Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer’s family
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 in-puts of fertilizer and pesticides.
Swidden
A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.
Thresh
To beat out grain from stalks by trampling it
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 bartering or the exchange of commodities.
Wet rice
Rice planted on dryland in a nursery, then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth.
Winnow
To remove chaff by allowing it to be blown away by the wind.
Winter wheat
Wheat planted in the fall and harvested in the early summer.
