agri-business

A form of agribusiness — Business (especially big business) connected to agriculture, either owning or operating large-scale farms, or catering to those who do.

Meanings

nounagri-business (plural agri-businesses)

plural agri-businesses

  1. alternativeAlternative form of agribusiness.

    The Agriculture Committee considers legislation affecting farmers, agri-business, the preservation of farmlands and the availability of capital for establishing new farms and enlarging existing ones.

    1979 January 31, “U.S. steel earnings increased”, in Joseph I. Donnelly, editor, Indiana Evening Gazette, volume 79, number 179, Indiana, Pa.: The Indiana Printing & Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 27, column 2
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    Plans are underway to open a chain of huge, agri-business farm centers that could be a far greater threat to rural America than anything the big chains or the federal government have caused in the last 50 years. [...] Financial backing for the building of these 40-acre, agri-business, all-engulfing raids on rural America was announced by Litton Industries, now involved in an antitrust suit.

    1969 June, Ed Wimmer, “Agri-business centers—big new threat”, in Independent Banker, Sauk Centre, Minn.: Independent Bankers Association of America, →ISSN, →OCLC; quoted in Role of Giant Corporations: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Monopoly of the Select Committee on Small Business, United States Senate, Ninety-first Congress, First Session on the Role of Giant Corporations in the American and World Economies: Part 1A—Appendixes: Automobile Industry—1969: […], Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, →OCLC, page 1012

    These county reports were distributed to farmers, assessors, credit agencies, county planning groups, agri-business personnel, Extension agents, vocational agriculture teachers, administrators and individuals with an interest in the land market.

    1970 April, “Agricultural Economics”, in Discovery and Growth: Survey of Agricultural Research in Maryland: Eightieth Annual Report: 1966–1967 (Bulletin A; 159), College Park, Md.: University of Maryland Agricultural Research Station, →OCLC, page 9, column 2

    As in the Spanish and American periods, public lands were made available for favoured private interests in agri-business, including foreign interests (using leasing arrangements to avoid the constitutional prohibition on foreign acquisition of land).

    1988, Mahar Mangahas, “Distributive Justice in the Philippines: Ideology, Policy and Surveillance”, in Lim Teck Ghee, editor, Reflections on Development in Southeast Asia, Singapore: ASEAN Economic Research Unit, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, →ISBN, page 95

    The following broad categories of machinery users can be identified: / ― Estates, plantations, and large agri-businesses that purchase their machinery outright or with credit from commercial banks, and have their own maintenance and repair facilities; [...]

    1990, “Introduction and Background”, in Agricultural Engineering in Development: Guidelines for Mechanization Systems and Machinery Rehabilitation Programmes (FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin; 85), Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, →ISBN, page 1

    However, cattle in such areas – for example, in modern Iraq – have as a rule either been exploited more for meat and draft than for milk and so exhibit expectedly low dairy production, or have been given supplementary and enhanced feeds, and tended according to modern agri-business standards, together hampering meaningful comparison of modern ethnographic reports with data in accounts from third millennium Mesopotamia.

    1995, Robert K. Englund, “Regulating Dairy Productivity in the Ur III Period”, in Orientalia, volume 64, number 4 (New Series), [Rome]: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum [Pontifical Biblical Institute], →OCLC, footnote 1, page 377
Cite this entry
APA

agri-business. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agri-business

MLA

“agri-business.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agri-business. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “agri-business,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agri-business.

Source: agri-business on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.