Unit 5: Agriculture and Rural Land Use Standard 5.A & 5.C

Question	Answer
Agriculture	Deliberate modification of Earth's surface through cultivation of plants and rearing of animals to obtain sustenance or economic gain.
Crop	Any plant cultivated by people
Subsistence agriculture	Found in LDCs and is the production of food primarily for consumption by the farmer's family.
Commercial agriculture	Found in MDCs and is the production of food primarily for sale off the farm.
Prime agricultural land	The most productive farmland
Agribusiness	Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.
Shifting cultivation	A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from field to another; each field is used for crops for a relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.
Slash-and-burn agriculture	Another name for shifting cultivation, so named because fields are cleared by slashing the vegetation and burning the debris.
Plantation	A large farm that specializes in one or two crops.
Cereal grain	A grass yielding grain for food.
Milkshed	The ring surrounding a city from which milk can be supplied without spoiling
Grain	The seed from various grasses, like wheat, corn, oats, barley, rice, millet, and others.
Winter wheat	Wheat planted in the autumn and harvested in the early summer.
Spring wheat	Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer.
Reaper	A machine that cuts grain standing in the field.
Combine	A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.
Ranching	The commercial grazing of livestock over an extensive area.
Horticulture	The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers
Truck farming	Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning bartering or the exchange of commodities.
Sustainable agriculture	An agricultural process that preserves and enhances environmental quality.
Ridge tillage	A system of planting crops on ridge tops.
Desertification	Process in which human actions are causing land to deteriorate to a desertlike condition.
Green revolution	The invention and rapid diffusion of more productive agricultural techniques during the 1970s and 1980s.
Consumer services	Provides services to individual customers who desire them and can afford to pay for them.
Business services	Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses, including professional, financial, and transporting services.
Public services	Provides security and protection for citizens and businesses.
City-states	Independent self-governing communities that included the settlement and nearby countryside.
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.
Dispersed rural settlement	Characterized by farmers living on individual farms isolated from neighbors rather than along-side other farmers in settlements.
Enclosure movement	The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.
Urbanization	The process by which the population of urban settlements grows.
Sustainable development	"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Conservation	The sustainable use and management of natural resources such as wildlife, water, air, and Earth's resources to meet human needs, including food, medicine, and recreation.
Preservation	The maintenance of resources in their present condition, with as little human impact as possible.
Biodiversity	The variety of species across Earth as a whole or in a specific place.

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Unit 5: Agriculture and Rural Land Use Standard 5.A & 5.C

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