GLOSSARY OF GEOGRAPHY (UNIT 7)

Plot: An area of land where crops are grown. It can vary in sixe, shape or borders

Soil: The subtance on the surface of the Earth in which plants grow, produced mainly by the weathering of rock.

Crop rotation: The practice of growing different types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons. This method improves sil fertility and resistance to disease and pests

Intensive agriculture:  is an agricultural production system characterized by a low fallow ratio and the high use of inputs such as capital, labour, or heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area.

Extensive agriculture: An agricultural system that uses small inputs of labour, fertilisers, and capital, relative to the area of land that is being farmed.

Dryland farming: Farming in which the fields receive only rainwater.

Irrigated farming: Farming in which the water from groundwater, reservoirs or rivers is brought to fields.

Polyculture:  is agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, and avoiding large stands of single crops, or monoculture. It includes multi-cropping, intercropping, companion planting, beneficial weeds, and alley cropping.

Monoculture:  is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop or plant species over a wide area and for a large number of consecutive years

Greenhouses:  is a building in which plants are grown

Subsistence agriculture: A type of agriculture in which farmers only grow enough food to feed themselves and their families.

Shifting cultivation:  is an 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

Livestock farming: Farming bassed on rearing animals to obtain products.

Housed livestock: Livestock fed with fodder in farm buildings. This type of livestock must pass strict sanitary and quality controls

Cattle: are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates.

Fodder:  is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs.

Rear: To care for, breed and grow animals until maturity.

Fishing grounds: An area of water that is used for fishing.

Aquaculture: is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants.

Overfishing:  is a form of overexploitation in which fish stocks are depleted to unacceptable levels, regardless of water body size.

Fleets: is an aggregate of commercial fishing vessels

School of fish: many fishes together