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Chapter 10 Vocabulary: Food and Agriculture

Terms in this set (41)

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 (or aquafarming)
The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions.
Cereal grain (or cereal)
A grass that yields grain for food.
Chaff
Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.
Combine
A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.
Commercial agriculture
Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off 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.
Desertification
Degradation of 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 (Calories in the United States).
Double cropping
Harvesting twice a year from the same field.
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.
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
A flooded field for growing rice; also (more correctly) called 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 agricultural land
The most productive farmland.
Ranching
A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area.
Reaper
A machine that cuts cereal grain standing in a field.
Ridge tillage
A system of plating crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.
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-brun 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 inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.
Swidden
A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.
Thresh
To beat out grain from stalks.
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 "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.
Winnow
To remove chaff by allowing it to be blown away by the wind.
Winter wheat
Wheat planted in the autumn and harvested in the early summer.
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