Term | Definition |
Agribusiness | Commercial agriculture integrated into a large food-production industry |
Aquaculture/ aquafarming | The cultivation of seafood under controlled condtions |
Cereal grain/cereal | A grass that yields grain for food |
Chaff | Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing |
Combine | A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field |
Commercial agriculture | Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm |
Crop roation | The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting the soil |
Desertification | Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions |
Dietary energy consumption | The amount of food that an individual consumes, measured in kilocalories |
Double cropping | Harvesting twice a year from the same field |
Food security | Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs for an active and healthy life |
Green revolution | Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially high-yield seeds and fertilizers |
Horticulture | The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers |
Hull | The outer covering of a seed |
Intensive subsistence agriculture | A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers expend a large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land. |
Milkshed | The area surrounding a city from which milk is supplied |
Paddy | The Maylay word for wet rice, commonly but incorrectly used to describe a sawah |
Pastoral nomadism | A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals |
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 |
Prime agricultural land | The most productive farmland |
Ranching | A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area |
Reaper | A machine that cuts cereal grain standing in a field |
Ridge tillage | A system of planting crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation |
Sawah | A flooded field for growing rice |
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 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 |
Spring wheat | Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer |
Sustainable agriculture | Farming methods that preserve the long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating crops and minimizing fertilizers/pesticides |
Swidden | A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning |
Thresh | To beat out grain from stalks |
Transhumance | The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures |
Truck farming | Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was Middle English for bartering |
Undernourishment | Dietary consumption that is consistently below the minimum requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out physical activity |
Wet rice | Rice planted on dry land in a nursery then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth |
Winnow | To remove chaff by allowing it to be blown away in the wind |
Winter wheat | Wheat planted in the autumn and harvested in the early summer |