| A | B |
|---|
| Agribusiness | The set of economic and political relationships that organize food production for commercial purposes. It includes activities ranging from seed production, to retailing, to consumption of agricultural products. |
| Agriculture | Art and science of producing food from the land and tending livestock for the purpose of human consumption. |
| Animal Husbandry | An agricultural activity associated with the raising of domesticated animals, such as cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. |
| Biotechnology | A form of technology that uses living organisms, usually genes, to modify products, to make or modify plants and animals, or to develop other microorganisms for specific purposes. |
| Capital-Intensive Agriculture | 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. |
| Commericial Agricultural Economy | All agricultural activity generated for the purpose of selling, not neccessarily for local consumption. |
| Dairying | An agricultural activity involving the raising of livestock, most commonly cows and goats, for dairy products such as milk, cheese, and butter. |
| Domestication | The conscious manipulation of plant and animal species by humans in order to sustain themselves. |
| Extensive Agriculture | An agricultural system characterized by low inputs of labor per unit land area. |
| Feedlots | Places where livestock are concentrated in a very smal area and raised on hormones and hearty grains that prepare them for slaughter at a much more rapid rate that grazing; other referred to as factory farms. |
| Fertile Crescent | Area located in the crescent-shaped zone near the south-eastern Mediterranean coast (including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey), which was once a lush environment and one of the first hearths of domestication and thus agricultural activity |
| Genetically Modified Foods | Foods that are mostly products of organisms that have had their genes altered in a laboratory for specific purposes, such as disease resistance, increased productivity, or nutritional value allowing growers greater control, predictability, and efficiency. |
| Green Revolution | The development of higher-yield and fast-growing crops through increased technology, pesticides, and fertilizers transferred from the developed to developing world to alleviate the problem of food supply in those regions of the globe. |
| Hunting and Gathering | The killing of wild animals and fish as well as the gatherng of fruits, roots, nutes, and other plants for sustenance. |
| Industrial Revolution | The rapid economic changes that occured in agriculture and manufacturing in English in the late 18th century and that rapidly spread to other parts of the developed world. |
| Intensive Cultivation | Any kind of agricultural activity that involves effective and efficient use of labor on small plots of land to maximze crop yield. |
| Labor-Intensive Agriculture | Type of agriculture that requires large levels of manual labor to be successful. |
| Livestock Ranching | An extensive commercial agricultural activity that involves the raisig of livestock over vast geographic spaces typicallys located in semi-arid climates like the American West, |
| Mechanization | In agriculture, the replacement of human labor with technolog or machines |
| Mediterranean Agriculture | An agricultural system practiced in the Mediterranean-style climates of Western Europe, California, and portions of Chile and Australia, in which diverse specialty crops such as grapes, avacados, olives, and a host of nuts, fruits, and vegetables comprise profitale agricultural operations |
| Pastoralism | A type of agricultural activity based on nomadic animal husbandry ot the raising of livestock to provide food, clothing, and shelter. |
| Pesticides | Chemicals used on plants that do not harm the pants, but kill pests and have negative effects on other species who ingest the chemicals. |
| Planned Agricultural Economy | An Agricultural ecnomy found in communist nations in whcih the government controls both agricultural production and distribution |
| Plantation | A large, frequently foreign-owned peice of agricultural land devoted to the production of a single crop |
| Salinization | Process that occurs when soils in arid areas are brought under cultivation through irrigation |
| Shifting Cultivation | The use of tropical forest clearings for crop production until their fertility is lost. Plots are then abandoned, and farmers move on tonew sites. |
| Slash and burn agriculture | System of cultivation that usually exists in tropical areas where vegitation is cut close to the ground and then ignited. The fire introduces nutrients to the soil, thereby making it productive for a relatively short period of time |
| Specialty crops | Crops including items like peanuts and pineapples, which are produced, usually in develpoing countries, for export |
| Subsistance agricultural economy | Any farm economy in which mot crops are grown for nearly exclusive family or local consumption |
| Swidden | Land that is prepared for agricultura by using the slash and burn method |
| Topsoil loss | Loss of the top fertile layer of soil is lost through erosion. It is a temendous problem in areas with fragile soils, steep slopes, or torrential seasonal rains |
| Transhumanance | The movements of livestock according to seasonal patterns generally lowland areas in the winter, and highland areas in the summer |
| Urban sprawl | The process of urban areas expanding outwards, usually in the form of suburbs, and developing over fertile sgricultural land. |
| Von Thunen Model | An agricultural model that spatialy describes agricultural activity in terms of rent. Activities that require intensive cultivation and can-not be treansported over great distances pay higher rent to be close to the market. Conversely, activities that are more extensive, with goods that are easy to transport, are located farther from the market where rent is less. |
