Agriculture
The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain.
Crop
Any plant gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season.
Agricultural revolution
The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.
Subsistence agriculture
Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer's family.
Commercial agriculture
Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.
Dietary energy consumption
The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in kilocalories (calories in the US).
Cereal grain (cereal)
A grass that yields grain for food. Wheat, rice, and maize (corn) are the three leading cereal grains and make up 90% of all grain production.
Grain
Seed of a cereal grass
Food security
Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Undernourishment
Dietary energy consumption that is continuously below the minimum requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out light physical activity.
Pastoral nomadism
A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.
Transhumance
The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.
Pasture
Grass or other plants grown for feeding grazing animals, as well as land used for grazing.
Shifting cultivation
A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one 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.
Swidden
A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.
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.
Wet rice
Rice planted on dry land in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth.
Sawah
A flooded field for growing rice.
Paddy
The Malay word for wet rice, commonly but incorrectly used by North Americans and Europeans to describe a sawah.
Chaff
Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing
Thresh
To beat out grain from stalks
Winnow
To remove chaff by allowing it to be blown away by the wind
Hull
The outer covering of a seed.
Double cropping
Harvesting twice a year from the same field.
Crop rotation
The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting soil.
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.
Agribusiness
Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food- processing industry, usually through ownership by large food corporations.
Truck farming
Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning bartering or exchange of commodities.
Milkshed
The area surrounding a city from which milk is supplied.
Reaper
A machine that cuts cereal grain standing in a field.
Combine
A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.
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.
Horticulture
The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Ranching
A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area.
Desertification
Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas primarily because of human actions such as excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting. Also known as semiarid land degradation.
Prime agricultural land
The most productive farmland.
Aquaculture (or aquafarming)
The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions.
Green revolution
Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yield seeds and fertilizers.
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 inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.
Ridge tillage
A system of planting crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.