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Learning Unit 6 (Making and earning a living)
Excluded:
Ch 10:
Sect 10.11 - Commercial Agriculture and Market Forces
Ch 11:
Sect 11.4 - Changing Steel Production
Sect 11.5 - Changing Auto Production
Sect 11.6 - Ship by Boat, Rail, Truck or Air?
Ch 12:
Sect 12.3 - Hierarchy of Consumer Services
Sect 12.4 - Market Area Analysis
Sect 12.5 - Hierarchy of Business Services
Sect 12.6 - Business Services in Developing Countries
Sect 12.7 - Economic Base.
Key terms:
Development: Section B, Chapter 9
Adolescent fertility rate: Number of births per 1 000 women age 15-
19.
Developed country: Country that has progressed relatively far
along a continuum of development.
Developing country: Country that is at a relatively early stage in
the process of economic development.
Development: Process of improvement in the material
conditions of people through diffusion of
knowledge and technology.
Fair trade: Alternative to international trade that
emphasizes small businesses and worked-
owned and democratically run cooperatives
and requires employers to pay workers fair
wages, permit union organizing and comply
with minimum environmental and safety
standards.
Foreign direct investment: Investment made by a foreign company in
the economy of another country.
Gender Inequality Index (GII): Indicator constructed by the UN to measure
the extent of each country’s gender
inequality.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Value of the total output of goods and
services produced by a country in a year,
not accounting for the money that leaves
and enters the country.
Gross national income (GNI): Value of the total output of goods and
services produced by a country in a year,
including money that leaves and enters the
country.
Summaries by Marizanne du Plessis All rights reserved.
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Human Development Index (HDI): Indicator of the level of development for
each country, constructed by the UN,
combining income, literacy, education and
life expectancy.
Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI): Indicator of level of development for each
country that modifies the HDI to account for
inequality.
Literacy rate: Percentage of country’s people who can
read and write.
Maternal mortality rate: Number of women who die giving birth per
100 000 births.
Primary sector: Portion of economy concerned with the
direct extraction of materials from Earth’s
surface, generally through agriculture,
although sometimes through mining, fishing
and forestry.
Productivity: Value of a particular product compared to
the amount of labor needed to make it.
Secondary sector: Portion of economy concerned with
manufacturing useful products through
processing, transforming and assembling
raw materials.
Structural adjustment program: Economic policies imposed on less
developed countries by international
agencies to create conditions encouraging
international trade, such as raising taxes,
reducing government spending, controlling
inflation, selling publicly owned utilities to
private corporations and charging citizens
more for services.
Tertiary sector: Portion of the economy concerned with
transportation, communications, and utilities,
sometimes extended to the provision of all
goods and services to people in exchange
for payment.
Value added: Gross value of the product minus the costs
of raw materials and energy.
Food and agriculture: Section B, Chapter 10
Agribusiness: Commercial agriculture characterized by the
integration of different steps in the food-processing
industry, usually through ownership by large
corporations.
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.
Aquaculture: The cultivation of seafood under controlled
conditions.
Summaries by Marizanne du Plessis All rights reserved.
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Cereal grain: A grass yielding grain for food.
Commercial agriculture: Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate
products for sale off the farm.
Crop: Grain or fruit gathered from a field as a harvest
during a particular season.
Crop rotation: The practice of rotating use of different fields from
crop to crop each year, to avoid exhausting the
soil.
Dietary energy The amount of food that an individual consumes.
consumption:
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.
Grain: Seed of a cereal grass.
Green revolution: Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology,
especially new high-yield seeds and fertilizers.
Intensive subsistence A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers
agriculture: must expend a relatively large amount of effort to
produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel
of land.
Milkshed: The ring surrounding a city from which milk can be
supplied without spoiling.
Overfishing: Capturing fish faster than they can reproduce.
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.
Ranching: A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock
graze over an extensive area.
Ridge tillage: System of planting crops on ridge tops in order to
reduce farm production costs and promote greater
soil conservation.
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.
Subsistence agriculture: Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for
direct consumption by the farmer and the farmers
family.
Sustainable agriculture: Farming methods that preserve long-term
productivity of land and minimize pollution,
typically by rotating soil-restoring crops with cash-
Summaries by Marizanne du Plessis All rights reserved.
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crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and
pesticides.
Swidden: A patch of land cleared for planting through
slashing and burning.
Taboo: A restriction on behaviour imposed by social
custom.
Terroir: French term for the contribution of a location’s
distinctive physical features to the way food tastes,
similar to the English expressions “grounded” or
“sense of place”.
Truck farming: Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named
because truck was a Middle English word meaning
bartering or the exchange of commodities.
Undernourishment: Dietary energy consumption that’s continuously
below the minimum requirement for maintaining a
healthy life and carrying out light physical activity.
Wet rice: Rice planted on dryland in a nursery and then
moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote
growth.
Industry: Section B, Chapter 11
Break-of-bulk point: Location where transfer is possible from one mode of
transportation to another.
Bulk-gaining industry: Industry in which the final product weighs more or
comprises a greater volume than the inputs.
Bulk-reducing industry: Industry in which the final product weighs less or
comprises a lower volume than the inputs.
Cottage industry: Manufacturing based in homes rather than in a
factory, commonly found prior to the Industrial
Revolution.
Industrial Revolution: A series of improvements in industrial technology that
transformed the process of manufacturing goods.
Just-in-time delivery: Shipment of parts and materials to arrive at a factory,
moments before they’re needed.
Labor-intensive industry: Industry for which labor costs comprise a high
percentage of total expenses.
Right-to-work state: A U.S state that has passed a law preventing a union
and company from negotiating a contract that
requires workers to join a union as a condition of
employment.
Site factors: Location factors related to the costs of factors of
production inside the plant, such as land, labor and
capital.
Situation factors: Location factors related to the transportation of
materials into and from a factory.
Services and settlements: Section B, Chapter 12
Summaries by Marizanne du Plessis All rights reserved.