AGRICULTURE KEY TERMS AND
CONCEPTS

Agriculture
 cultivation of animals , plants , fungi , and other life forms for food , fiber , biofuel , medicinals and other products used to sustain and enhance human life.
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Crop
 cultivated plant , fungus , or alga that is harvested for food , clothing , livestock fodder , biofuel , medicine , or other uses.

Carl Sauer
 American geographer .

Subsistence Farming
 self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families.

Commercial Agriculture
 characterized by a low fallow ratio and higher use of inputs such as capital and labour per unit land area.
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Agribusiness
 business of agricultural production.

Shifting Cultivation
 agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned and allowed to revert to their natural vegetation while the cultivator moves on to another plot.

Fallow
 practice of growing a series of dissimilar/different types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons .

Slash-and-Burn
Agriculture/Swidden
 agricultural technique that involves the cutting and burning of plants in forests or woodlands to create fields.

Pastoral Nomadism
 form of pastoralism where livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze .

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

Pasture
 land used for grazing .
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Wet rice
 flooded parcel of arable land used for growing semiaquatic rice.

Sawah

 a song by Egyptian pan-Arab singer Abdel
Halim Hafez .
Believe it or not this s0ng was released in
2009 by Halim Hafez. The song influenced the work in agriculture, listen to it

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdQuQG
_oFgw
Question: Specifically in any work you do, would this song inspire you to work harder!

Chaff
 dry, scaly protective casings of the seeds of cereal grain , or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material such as scaly parts of flowers , or finely chopped straw .

Winnow
 agricultural method developed by ancient cultures for separating grain from chaff .

Crop Rotation
 practice of growing a series of dissimilar/different types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons .

Cereal Grain
 grass , a member of the monocot family
Poaceae , [1] cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis ), composed of the endosperm , germ , and bran .

Corn
 a large grain plant domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times .

Soybeans
 a species of legume native to East Asia , widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses.

Milkshed
 a region producing milk that may be supplied to the area of demand.

Grain
 small, hard, dry seeds , with or without attached hulls or fruit layers, harvested for human or animal consumption.
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Wheat
 a cereal grain , originally from the Levant region of the Near East but now cultivated worldwide.

Winter Wheat/Spring Wheat
 strains of wheat that are planted in the autumn to germinate and develop into young plants that remain in the vegetative phase during the winter and resume growth in early spring.

Reaper
 farming tool or person that reaps (cuts and gathers) crops at harvest , when they are ripe.

Ranching
 an area of landscape , including various structures, given primarily to the practice of
ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool.

Barbed Wire
 type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand(s).

Horticulture
 branch of agriculture that deals with the art , science , technology , and business of plant cultivation.

Irrigation
 artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops , maintenance of landscapes , and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall.

Truck Farming
 relatively small-scale production of fruits , vegetables and flowers as cash crops , frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants .

Plantation
 large piece of land (or water) usually in a tropical or semitropical area where one crop is intentionally planted for widespread commercial sale and usually tended by resident laborers.

Eli Whitney
 American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin .

Ester Boserup
 a Danish economist .

Johann Heinrich von Thunen
 prominent nineteenth century economist.
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Resource
 source or supply from which benefit is produced.

Biomass
 biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms.

Fossil Fuel
 fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms .

Renewable Energy
 generally defined as energy that comes from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale such as sunlight , wind , rain , tides , waves and geothermal heat .

Proven Reserve
 business or political terms regarding fossil fuel energy sources.

Oil Shales
 organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds ) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oil — crude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced.

Tar Sands
 unconventional petroleum deposit .

Air Pollution
 introduction of particulates , biological molecules , or other harmful materials into the Earth's atmosphere , possibly causing disease, death to humans, damage to other living organisms such as food crops, or the natural or built environment .

Radioactive Waste
 contain radioactive material.

Breeder Reactor
 a nuclear reactor capable of generating more fissile material than it consumes .
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Passive Solar Energy Systems
 windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer.

Active Solar Energy Systems
 pumps or fans to circulate fluid (often a mixture of water and glycol to prevent freezing during winter periods) or air, through solar collectors , and are therefore classified under active solar technology.

Photovoltaic Cells
 electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect .

Hydroelectric Power
 electricity generated by hydropower ; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water.

Geothermal Energy
 thermal energy generated and stored in the
Earth.

Fusion
 the process of combining two or more distinct entities into a new whole.

Pollution
 introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change.

Greenhouse Effect
 process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases , and is re-radiated in all directions.

Ozone
 inorganic molecule with the chemical formula
OO
2 (also written [O
3]).

Acid Precipitation/Acid
Deposition
 rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic , meaning that it possesses elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH ).

Photochemical Smog
 type of air pollutant .

Sanitary Landfill
 a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment .

Incineration
 a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials.
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Desertification
 a type of land degradation in which a relatively dry land region becomes increasingly arid, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife.
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Green Revolution
 a series of research, and development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1960s, that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.

Sustainable Development
 a road-map , an action plan , for achieving sustainability in any activity that uses resources and where immediate and intergenerational replication is demanded.