AP Human Geography Chapter 10

Sawah

A flooded field for growing rice, Europeans and North Americans call it paddy (the Malay word for rice)

Ranching

A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area

Pastoral Nomadism

A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expend a relatively large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land.

Shifting Cultivation

A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another; each field is used for crops for relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.

Cereal Grain

A grass yielding grain for food; such as oats, wheat, rye, or barley

Plantation

A large farm in tropical and subtropical climates that specializes in the production of one or two crops for sale, usually to a more developed country.

Swidden

A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Agribusiness

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

Truck Farming

Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning batering or the exchange of commodities.

Desertification

Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting.

Grain

Seed of a cereal grass; wheat, corn, oats, barley, rice, millet, and others.

Crop Rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year, to avoid exhausting the soil.

Transhumance

The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.

Subsistence Agriculture

found in LDCs, is the production of food primarily for consumption by the farmer's family

Commercial Agriculture

found in MDCs, is the production of food primarily for sale off the farm

Crop

is any plant cultivated by people

Agriculture

is deliberate modification of Earth's surface through cultivation of plants and rearing of animals to obtain sustenance or economic gain

Winter-wheat

is the belt through Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma; the crop is planted in the fall and develops a strong root system before growth stops in the winter

Spring-wheat

is the belt through the Dakotas, Montana, and part of Southern Canada; the spring wheat is planted in the spring and harvested in late summer

Slash-and-burn agriculture

is when farmers clear the land for planting by slashing vegetation and burning debris

Green Revolution

rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yeild seeds and fertilizers.

Ridge Tillage

system of planting crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation

Sustainable Agriculture

Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil- restoring crops with cash crops and reducing in-puts of fertilizer and pesticides.

Double Cropping

Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Wet Rice

Rice planted on dryland in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth

Prime Agricultural Land

The most productive farm land