wotd Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is 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.
What are Shifting Cultivations?
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.
What is Horticulture?
The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
What is Dietary Energy Consumption?
The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in calories.
What is Subsistence Agriculture?
Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer’s family.
What is Pastoral Nomadism?
A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.
What is another name for Slash and Burn Agriculture?
Shifting cultivation.
Fields are cleared by slashing the vegetation and burning the debris.
What is Transhumance?
The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.
What is a Sawah?
A flooded field for growing rice.
What is Agribusiness?
Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.
What is Food Security?
Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
What are Food Deserts?
An area in a developed country where healthy food is difficult to obtain.
What is Swidden?
A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.
What is Irrigation?
A man-made system whereby water is spread from its natural source (such as a lake or river) over a much larger geographic range to aid in agricultural production.
What is 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.
What is Sustainable Agriculture?
Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil-restoring crop with cash crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.
What is overfishing?
Overfishing occurs when we take marine resources at a rate faster than they can reproduce or recover.
What is aquaculture?
Aquaculture is the cultivation or farming of aquatic species, such as fish, in controlled conditions.
In contrast to commercial fishing, which involves catching wild fish.
What does GMO stand for?
GMO stands for ‘Genetically Modified Organism.’ It refers to a crop whose genetic structure has been altered to make it more useful and efficient for human purposes.
What is the Green Revolution?
The Green Revolution refers to the development of higher-yield and fast-growing crops through increased technology, pesticides, and fertilizers.
This was transferred from the developed to developing world to alleviate the problem of food supply in those regions.
