Oophorectomy is the surgical removal of the ovaries of a female animal. In the case of non-human animals, this is also called spaying. It is a form of sterilization.
The removal of the ovaries together with the Fallopian tubes is called salpingo-oophorectomy. Oophorectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy are not common forms of birth control in humans; more usual is tubal ligation, in which the Fallopian tubes are blocked but the ovaries remain intact.
In humans, oophorectomy is most usually performed together with a hysterectomy - the removal of the uterus. Its use in a hysterectomy when there are no other health problems is somewhat controversial.
In animals, spaying involves an invasive removal of the ovaries, but rarely has major complications; the superstition that it causes weight gain is not based on fact. Spaying is especially important for certain animals that require the ovum to be released at a certain interval (called estrus or "heat"), such as cats and dogs. If the cell is not released during these animal's heat, it can cause severe medical problems that can be averted by spaying or partnering the animal with a male.
Oophorectomy is sometimes referred to as castration, but that term is most often used to mean the removal of a male animal's testicles.
Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy.
In his introduction to Agrarianism in American Literature, M. Thomas Inge defines "agrarianism" by the following basic tenets:
Agrarianism is not identical with the back to the earth movement, but it can be helpful to think of it in those terms. The agrarian philosophy is not to get people to reject progress, but rather to concentrate on the fundamental goods of the earth, communities of limited economic and political scale, and simple living--even when this involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments.
The name "agrarian" is properly applied to figures from Horace and Virgil through Thomas Jefferson, Transcendentals like Emerson and Thoreau, the Southern Agrarians movement of the 1920s and 1930s (also knows as the Vanderbilt Agrarians) and present-day authors Wendell Berry, Alan Carlson , and Victor Davis Hanson.
In the 1910s and 1920s, agrarianism garnered significant popular attention, but was eclipsed in the industrial boom of the postwar period. It revived somewhat in conjunction with the 1960s environmentalist movement, and has been drawing an increasing number of adherents.
Recent agrarian thinkers are sometimes referred to as neo-Agrarian.