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What is a term for crop/livestock, something raised for indirect value?

English Language & Usage Asked on December 10, 2021

What is a term for crop/livestock, something raised for indirect value?

2 Answers

In economics, it’s called an intermediate good or a producer good, in contrast to consumer goods or in more formal terms, final goods and services.

Indirect value isn’t the right term. These goods are sold as inputs to other goods or products, perhaps in a long chain.

As you suggest in the question, corn is grown (primarily) to feed cattle or make corn syrup or ethanol, only partly to sell to consumers as a vegetable.

The same product (e.g., flour) can be sold to households for baking or to bakeries, where the final good is bread or cookies or whatever.

When gross domestic product is calculated, it’s final goods and services that we want, so the flour used to make the bread that’s sold isn’t double-counted.

See the Investopedia article for more detail.

Answered by Xanne on December 10, 2021

A word that encompasses both crops and livestock, as well as other things, is cultivate (I will include all of its senses):

[Merriam-Webster]
1 : to prepare or prepare and use for the raising of crops
   // Some fields are cultivated while others lie fallow.
   also : to loosen or break up the soil about (growing plants)
2 a : to foster the growth of
      // cultivate vegetables
      // cultivate coffee
2 b : CULTURE sense 2a
       // cultivate oysters for pearls
2 c : to improve by labor, care, or study : REFINE
      // cultivate the mind
      // … cultivated a reputation as a hard-core wheeler-dealer …
      — Kit Boss
3 : FURTHER, ENCOURAGE
// cultivate the arts
4 : to seek the society of : make friends with
// looking for influential people to cultivate as friends

Although it would be more natural to just say that you were raising animals, as in the question itself, if used with livestock specifically, cultivate would use the second sense of the word (fostering the animals growth)—or a metaphorical form of the first sense.

The equivalent noun is cultivation.

Answered by Jason Bassford on December 10, 2021

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