Glossary
Farm Manager Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential farm manager terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key farm manager vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in farm manager training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Agronomist
- A crop and soil scientist.
- Commodity
- A crop or product traded in markets.
- Conservation practices
- Methods that protect soil and water.
- Cover crops
- Crops planted to protect soil.
- Crop insurance
- Insurance against crop losses.
- Crop rotation
- Changing crops to improve soil.
- Farm Service Agency
- USDA agency with farm programs.
- Futures
- Contracts to buy or sell later.
- Grain elevator
- A facility that buys and stores grain.
- Herd health
- Care practices for livestock.
- Input costs
- Seed, fertilizer and fuel costs.
- Irrigation
- Watering crops.
- Precision agriculture
- Using data and GPS to manage fields.
- Soil test
- Analysis of soil nutrients.
- Yield
- Crop produced per acre.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Farm Manager practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Farm Manager training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.