Technical English for agriculture

As the world goes global, the agricultural business needs to move across frontiers and oceans. Food, raw and processed, is regularly transported across continents. As space is no longer a limit for food trade and human nutrition, language cannot represent a barrier to this continuous exchange. In the last 60 years, English has been taking a foothold as the primary language for world trade and the exchange of agricultural goods is no exception. Agricultural sciences embrace a large number of disciplines, from botany to environmental physiology, from soil science to meteorology, from plant propagation to cultural management, from soil management to pest control, from field crops to animal husbandry, and so on. Learning a wide array of technical terms related to these disciplines is imperative today to be part of the world’s farming business, but certainly not an easy task. This handbook provides a first basic support to the vast amount of technical terms used in agriculture. It is intended to expand with time and include many more terms as other major and specialized subjects will be added. It is today a simple but useful tool for those who speak English as a second language and want to acquire the basic terminology for working and studying in the Agricultural field, as well as for interacting with an international audience.