!Chapter 11 Flashcards
A highly integrated form of transnational corporation in the agricultural, or food production, sector; typically highly capitalized, operating on a large scale (often across various regions), corporately owned, and vertically integrated (encompassing the growing, processing, and marketing of food).
Agribusiness
The gradual transition of human subsistence, beginning about 12,000 years ago, from dependence on foraging (hunting and gathering) to food production through plant and animal domestication.
Agricultural revolution
An agricultural system in which production is primarily for sale for profit; typically large scale, utilizing large amounts of land and the latest technology, and highly mechanized.
Commercial agriculture
The ongoing process of selectively breeding plants and animals for specific characteristics (abundance of fruit, hardiness of seed, protein content of meat, and so on) that make them more useful to humans.
Domestication
A model of human behaviour in which each individual is assumed to be completely rational (makes sound and well-reasoned decisions); economic operators aim to maximize returns and minimize costs
Economic operator
The surplus income that accrues to a unit of land above the minimum income needed to bring a unit of new land into production at the margins of production
Economic rent
An agricultural enterprise, primarily focused on livestock, that typically houses large numbers of domesticated animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) in buildings and on feedlots; often criticized for inhumane treatment of animals
Factory (industrial) farms
An agricultural enterprise owned and/or operated by a family and which is passed to descendants through inheritance; typically, most of the farm labour and management is by family members; family farms tend to be smaller in size and production than other types, such as factory farms or agribusinesses
Family farms
The twentieth-century introduction of new technologies (including mechanization, fertilizers, pesticides, new crop strains, and more intensive land use) that dramatically increased agricultural production, especially as they were introduced in areas of the less developed world; sometimes referred to as the third agricultural revolution.
Green Revolution
An agricultural system that uses intensive methods, such as those from industry, to generate the maximum agricultural yields and profits possible per unit of land; a common approach in commercial agriculture, through the production of crops and/or livestock.
Industrial farming
A local variety of a domesticated animal or plant species that is well adapted to a particular physical and cultural environment
Landrace
A body of theories explaining the spatial distribution of economic activities; commonly applied in agricultural, industrial, and urban contexts
Location theory
Economic and political strategies of dominance and subordination by powerful states over others; often develops after colonialism ends and the former colony achieves political but not economic independence
Neo-colonialism
A theory that focuses on what ought to happen, rather than what actually does occur; the aim is to seek what is rational, or optimal, according to some given criteria.
Normative theory
An agricultural system oriented around animal husbandry (raising of livestock), where domesticated animals are released onto large, vegetated lands (pasture) for grazing; typically practised by nomadic people who move with their herds; sometimes referred to as transhumance
Pastoral nomadism (pastoralism)
