Agricultural Origins & Development
What is the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution?
This was the first major shift from hunting and gathering to farming.
What is subsistence agriculture?
Farming that focuses on growing crops mainly for personal consumption.
What is mixed farming?
The system of raising livestock and crops together on the same land.
What is food security?
This refers to the ability of a country to produce enough food for its population.
What is deforestation?
Cutting down forests to create farmland.
What is domestication?
The process of plants and animals adapting to human use over time.
What is commercial agriculture?
Farming that produces crops for sale in markets.
What is mechanization?
The use of machines instead of human labor in agriculture.
What is food insecurity?
This term describes when people do not have reliable access to enough affordable food.
What is soil degradation?
The process of soil losing its nutrients and productivity.
What is the multiple nuclei theory of agriculture?
The theory that agriculture originated in multiple independent regions.
What is crop rotation?
A farming system where different crops are grown in different fields in rotation.
What is cloning (or plant propagation)?
Farming technique that uses genetically identical plants produced from a single parent.
What is global agribusiness?
The system where crops are grown in one country and exported worldwide.
What is salinization?
Overwatering farmland causing salt buildup in soil.
What is irrigation?
This early agricultural innovation allowed people to settle in one place.
What is the Von Thünen Model?
This model explains agricultural land use based on distance from a city center.
What is intensive agriculture?
This agricultural method uses small amounts of land but intensive labor and capital.
What is industrial agriculture?
This concept refers to large-scale farming dominated by corporations.
What is conservation tillage?
Farming method that helps preserve soil by planting cover crops and reducing erosion.
What is the Fertile Crescent?
This region is often called the “cradle of agriculture” because many crops were first domesticated there.
What is slash-and-burn agriculture?
The type of agriculture commonly found in tropical regions with shifting cultivation.
What is precision agriculture?
Farming that uses precise technology like GPS and data to maximize efficiency.
What is the global food gap?
This is the unequal access to nutritious food between wealthy and poor regions.
What is climate change?
The long-term change in climate caused partly by greenhouse gases from agriculture.