AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS
This revolution marked humanity's transition from hunting and gathering to farming around 10,000 years ago.
What is the First Agricultural Revolution?
Farming primarily to feed your own family with little surplus for sale.
What is subsistence agriculture?
This climate has hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, ideal for olives and grapes.
What is Mediterranean climate?
Clearing forests for agriculture, leading to habitat loss and soil erosion.
What is deforestation?
Organisms whose DNA has been artificially modified for desired traits.
What are GMOs?
The mechanical reaper, seed drill, and steel plow were key innovations of this revolution in the 1700s-1800s.
What is the Second Agricultural Revolution?
Growing rice in flooded fields, common in monsoon Asia
What is paddy rice farming?
These seasonal wind patterns bring heavy rains to South and Southeast Asia.
What are monsoons?
: Land degradation that turns productive land into desert-like conditions.
What is desertification?
Growing the same crop on the same land year after year
What is monocropping (or monoculture)?
The Fertile Crescent, Mesoamerica, and the Indus River Valley are examples of these areas where agriculture originated.
What are agricultural hearths?
Moving livestock seasonally between pastures in search of grazing land.
What is pastoral nomadism (or nomadic herding)?
This theory states that land value decreases with distance from the market center.
What is bid-rent theory?
Salt accumulation in soil from excessive irrigation that reduces fertility.
What is soil salinization?
Large facilities where thousands of animals are raised in confined spaces.
What is a CAFO?
This 1960s revolution introduced high-yield varieties of rice and wheat to developing countries.
What is the Green Revolution?
Clearing forest, burning vegetation, farming briefly, then moving to new land when soil depletes.
What is shifting cultivation (or slash-and-burn)?
This U.S. survey system created a grid pattern of square townships, visible in the Midwest.
What is township and range?
Oxygen-depleted ocean areas caused by nutrient runoff from fertilizers.
What are dead zones?
Consumers purchase shares of a farm's harvest in advance.
What is Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)?
This wild grass native to Mexico was domesticated into modern corn.
What is teosinte?
Large-scale commercial farming focused on a single cash crop, historically associated with colonial regions.
What is plantation agriculture?
This French colonial pattern created long, narrow parcels perpendicular to rivers.
What is the long lot system?
Extracting groundwater faster than it can be naturally replenished.
What is water mining?
This 1492 event exchanged plants, animals, and diseases between Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
What is the Columbian Exchange?