Meaning & use
commercial farming
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
Growing crops or raising animals mainly to sell for profit rather than to feed the farmer's own family.
Grammar: Not used with an or plural: commercial farming is growing, not 'a commercial farming'.
Patterns
- engage in commercial farming
- commercial farming of something
Commercial farming in the region focuses on wheat and soybeans for export.
Many small villages moved from subsistence to commercial farming after the new road opened.
Commercial farming often relies on machines, fertilizer and large fields.
Common combinations
- large-scale commercial farming
- Large-scale commercial farming has changed the landscape of the plains.
- engage in commercial farming
- Many families engage in commercial farming to earn cash income.
- shift to commercial farming
- The shift to commercial farming raised yields but cost jobs.
- commercial farming methods
- Modern commercial farming methods use satellites to guide tractors.
- commercial farming industry
- The commercial farming industry employs thousands in the valley.
Synonyms and how they differ
- agribusiness
- Agribusiness covers the whole business side of farming including processing and supply, so it is broader than commercial farming.
- cash cropping
- Cash cropping refers specifically to growing crops to sell, while commercial farming includes livestock and the whole farm operation.
- industrial farming
- Industrial farming stresses intensive, factory-like methods and often carries criticism, whereas commercial farming only means farming for sale.
Opposites
Word family
- commercial adjective
- concerned with buying and selling for profit
- commercially adverb
- in a way that aims to make money
- farmer noun
- a person who works a farm
- farm verb
- to grow crops or keep animals on land
Commonly confused: commercial farming or subsistence farming?
commercial farming vs subsistence farming
Subsistence farming produces food mainly for the farmer's own family, with little left to sell, unlike commercial farming.
Practice
Which farm is an example of commercial farming?
Choose one answer.
Commercial farming produces for sale and profit. The other options describe food grown for personal use or teaching, not for sale.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “commercial farming”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.