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