This document defines and describes various key terms related to agriculture and geography. It includes definitions for types of agriculture like shifting cultivation, slash-and-burn, livestock ranching, and plantation agriculture. It also defines agricultural processes, crops, and influential individuals such as Carl Sauer and Thomas Malthus. Broadly, the document covers topics ranging from subsistence farming to agribusiness and commodity chains.

1. Human
Geog r aphy
Agriculture

2. Shifting Cultivation
 The use of multiple plots of land,
normally three or more, which are
planted in rotation by the year as to
promote soil functionality.

3. Agriculture
 The science, art, or occupation
concerned with cultivating land, raising
crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising
livestock; farming
 The cultivation of animals, plants, fungi,
and other life forms for food, fiber, and
other products used to sustain life.

4. Intertillage
 In shifting cultivation, spreads out
production over the farming season by
planting different crops in the same field.

5. Slash-and-Burn
(swidden)
 A method of agriculture used in the
tropics, in which forest vegetation is
felled and burned, the land is cropped for
a few years, then the forest is allowed to
reinvade.
 Swidden is the plot of land that has been
slash-and-burned upon.

6. MILKSHED
 A region that produces milk for a specific
community
 The area surrounding a city from which milk
is supplied

7. Market Gardening
 Highly intensive (in capital terms) farming
of flowers, fruit, and very perishable
vegetables on a commercial basis.
 Located close to urban areas as an
immediate market, but large enterprises
may also distribute at a national and
regional scale.

8. Livestock Ranching
 The breeding and raising of animals,
these animals are usually used for meat
purposes and raised in large herds.

9. Subsidy
 Assistance paid to a business or
economic sector.

10. Mediterranean
Agriculture
 Form of Agriculture along the side of the
Mediterranean Sea. The sea winds
provide moisture for the crops and
moderate winter temperatures and takes
place in hilly, mountainous regions.
 Ex: Olives and grapes

11. Luxury Crop
 Crops that are not essential to human
survival and are sold at a high price.
 EX: Tobacco, Sugarcane, and cotton

12. Crop Rotation
 The system of varying successive crops
in a definite order on the same ground
especially to avoid depleting the soil and
to control weed diseases and pests-
dictionary.com

13. Commercial agriculture
 The production of crops where the main
goal is to turn a profit. Usually intended
for widespread distribution to wholesalers
or retail outlets. –AP human geography
website.

14. Carl Sauer
 American geographer who studied and
focused on the relationship between
humans and land

15. Domestication
 Adaptation on to intimate association
with human life.

16. Fallow
 Unplowed and unseeded during a
growing season

17. Double Cropping
 Harvesting twice a year from the same
feild

18. Von Th űnen’s Model of
Land Use
 States how market prices and location
affect the production decisions of
individual farmers

19. Horticulture
 The growing of fruit, vegetables, or
flowers

20. GMO (genetically
modified organisms)
 Crops that carry new traits that have
been inserted through advanced genetic
engineering methods.

21. Green Revolution
 Rapid diffusion of new agricultural
technology, especially new high-yield
seeds and fetilizers.

22. Ranching
 A form of commercial agriculture in which
livestock graze over an extensive area.

23. Subsistence
Agriculture
- agriculture designed primarily to provide
for direct consumption by the farmer’s
family.

24. Neolithic Revolution
 Transferring from hunter and gathering to
cultivating plants (agriculture).

25. Vertical Integration
Ownership by the same firm
of a number of companies
that exist along a variety of
points on a commodity chain.

26. Truck farm
by mac and tim
 Highly efficient large scale operations
that take full advantage of machines at
every stage of the growing process.

27. Ridge tillage
 System of planting crops on ridge tops in
order to reduce farm production cost and
promote greater soil conservation

28. Transhumance
 Transhumance is the seasonal
movement of people with their livestock
between fixed summer and winter
pastures.

29. Pastoral Nomadism
 Pastoralism involves the breeding and
herding of animals to satisfy the
human needs for food, shelter, and
clothing.

30. Thomas Malthus
 an English scholar, influential in political
economy and demography. Malthus
popularized the economic theory of rent.
 Malthus has become widely known for
his theories about population and its
increase or decrease in response to
various factors

31. Rural Settlement
 Clustered rural settlement- a place where
a number of families live in close
proximity to each other with fields
surrounding the collection of houses and
farm buildings

32. Extensive Subsistence
Agriculture
 Agriculture designed primarily to provide
food for direct consumption by the farmer
and the farmer’s family.

33. Intensive Subsistence
Farming
 Primary subsistence pattern of large-
scale, populous societies. It results in
much more food being produced per
acre compared to other subsistence
patterns.
 A form of subsistence agriculture that
involves effective and efficient use of
labor on small plots of land to maximize
crop yields

34. AQUACULTURE!!!
 FARMING OF AQUATIC ORGANISMS
SUCH AS FISH, SHELLFISH, AND
EVEN PLANTS.
 www.Maine.gov

35. Dairying
 Branch of agriculture that encompasses
the breeding, raising, and utilization of
dairy animals for the production of milk
and the various dairy products processed
from it

36. Agribusiness
 Commercial agriculture characterized by
the integration of different steps in the
food processing industry, usually through
ownership by large corporations.

37. Feedlot
 A management system in which naturally
grazing animals are confined to a small
area which produces no feed and are fed
on stored feeds.

38. Biotechnology
 The manipulation of living organisms to
produce useful usually commercial
products

39. Boserup hypothesis
 Agricultural methods that depend on the
size of the population.

40. Commodity chain
 Process used by multinational
corporations where firms gather
resources, transform them into foods or
commodities and, finally is distributed to
the consumers

41. “ Tragedy of the
Commons”
 If a resource is used by all, then,
ultimately, that resource will be
destroyed.

42. Plantation
 a usually large farm or estate, especially
in a tropical or semitropical country, on
which cotton, tobacco, coffee, sugar
cane, or the like is cultivated, usually by
resident laborers.

43. The End
 WOOOOOOOOO
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