Agriculture Terms II
An animal that depends on people for food and shelter and is different from its wild ancestors in looks and behavior as a result of close contact with humans
What is a domesticated animal?
A tightly bunched farm settlement that has anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred inhabitants
What is clustered settlement?
The act of mixing different species or varieties of plants or animals to produce hybrids
What is crossbreeding?
An arrangement between an independent farmer and an agribusiness company to produce a crop
What is contract farming?
A living organism, including crops and livestock, that is produced through genetic engineering
What is a genetically modified organism (GMO)?
Crop cultivation and livestock rearing systems that use high levels of labor and capital relative to the size of the landholding
What is intensive agriculture?
Land survey system created by the US Land Ordinance of 1785, which divides most of the country’s territory into a grid of square shaped townships with 6 mile sides
What is township and range?
The US supported development of high-yield seed varieties that increased the productivity of cereal crops and accompanying agricultural technologies for transfer to less developed countries
What is the Green Revolution?
Sections of a body of water where there is very little aquatic life, often as a result of consequences of runoff from farms
What are dead zones?
The cultivation and harvesting of aquatic organisms under controlled conditions
What is aquaculture?
Farming oriented exclusively towards the production of agricultural commodities for sale in the market
What is commercial agriculture?
A settlement pattern in which buildings are arranged in a line, often along a road or a river
What is a linear settlement pattern?
This occurs when ideas leapfrog from one important person, community, or city to another; bypassing other persons, communities, or rural areas
What is hierarchical diffusion?
Agribusinesses, organized at the global scale; encompasses all elements of growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food for people
What is the global supply chain?
The production of crops and livestock using ecological processes, natural biodiversity, and renewable resources rather than industrial practices and synthetic inputs
What is organic farming?
A crop raised to be sold for profit rather than to feed the farm family and the livestock
What is a cash crop?
A survey system that uses natural features such as trees, boulders, and streams to delineate property boundaries
What is metes and bounds?
The problem resulting from increased concentrations of dissolved salts in the soil, often caused by overuse of irrigation
What is soil salinization?
Seeds that are developed and entirely owned by a company
What are proprietary seeds?
An area with limited access to fresh, nutritious food
What is a food desert?
A system of wet cultivation on small level fields bordered by impermeable dikes
What is paddy rice farming?
A settlement pattern in which families live relatively distant from each other
What is a dispersed settlement pattern?
The act of planting another crop on the same plot of land as soon as the first crop has been harvested
What is double-cropping?
The process of draining land inundated with either fresh water or salt water to increase areas for agricultural production
What is water control land reclamation?
A crop whose physical state or form has been changed
What is a value-added specialty crop?