1,000 Days: A public-private partnership promoting targeted action and investment to improve nutrition for mothers and children in the 1,000 day period from pregnancy to age two when better nutrition has a life-changing impact on a child’s future.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA): $787 billion economic recovery plan enacted in February 2009 with provisions for federal tax cuts and incentives, an expansion of unemployment benefits and other social entitlement programs. In addition, 28 federal agencies received Recovery funds to finance contracts, grants, and loans around the country.
Biofuels: Fuels made from any organic matter that is available on a renewable or recurring basis. Ethanol made from sugarcane or corn would be an example of biofuels.
Budget deficit: The amount by which the federal government’s total outlays exceed its total revenues in a given period, typically a fiscal year.
Cargo preference: Whenever the federal government pays for equipment, material, or commodities shipped to other countries, a minimum percentage of the gross tonnage shipped by sea must go by U.S.-flag vessels.
Circle of Protection: An initiative launched in 2011 by a broad coalition of Christian groups to oppose budget cuts to programs that would slash or eliminate programs that provide essential services for poor and vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad.
Civil society: The sphere of civic action outside of the government comprised of citizens’ groups, nongovernmental organizations, religious congregations, labor unions and foundations.
Clean Air Act: The law that establishes the basic structure for government regulation of the nation’s air quality and the stratospheric ozone layer.
Clean Water Act: The law that establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.
Climate change: Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
Commodity payments: The U.S. government provides commodity payments for a select group of crops. The largest recipients are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. Farmers who grow these can receive payments for losses in income due to low yields or low market prices. Other payments have nothing to do with market price or yield—farmers (or landowners) receive a payment by virtue of holding land with a history of raising one of the commodity crops.
Conservation: Activities, systems, practices, or management measures designed to address a resource concern. Structural, vegetative, and land management measures (including agricultural drainage management systems), and planning needed to address a resource concern are included.
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR): A strategic partnership of diverse donors that support 15 international research centers, working in collaboration with many hundreds of government and civil society organizations as well as private businesses around the world.
Decoupled support: When commodity program payments are tied to current production or net returns, they can introduce market distortions by influencing planting decisions, overall production, and market prices. In contrast to such “coupled” programs, benefits from “decoupled” programs do not depend on the farmer’s production choices, output levels, or market conditions.
Developed countries: An alternate way of describing highly industrialized nations such as the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan.
Developing countries: Countries with low per capita income. Terms such as less developed country, least developed country, underdeveloped country, poor, southern or Third World have also been used to describe developing countries.
Development assistance: Grants and loans to developing countries by donors to spur economic development and poverty reduction.
Direct payments: Fixed payments for eligible historic production of wheat, corn, barley, grain sorghum, oats, upland cotton, long and medium grain rice, soybeans, other oilseeds, and peanuts.
Doha Development Round: The name given to the current round of multilateral trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (see below).
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): A federal government program that provides a cash benefit to many low-income working people by refunding a portion of their income taxes.
Electronic benefit transfer (EBT) systems: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are provided through EBT systems under which recipients use an EBT card (similar to a debit card) to access their food stamp benefit “account” (replenished monthly) to buy food items.
Emergency food aid: Food aid provided to victims of natural or man-made disasters. It is freely distributed to targeted beneficiary groups and is usually provided on a grant basis.
Family farm: SDA defines a “family farm” as any farm organized as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or family corporation. Family farms exclude farms organized as nonfamily corporations or cooperatives, as well as farms with hired managers. Family farms are closely held (legally controlled) by their operator and the operator’s household.
Famine: An extreme collapse in local availability and access to food that causes a widespread rise in deaths from outright starvation or hunger-related illnesses.
Farm bill: A multi-year, omnibus law that contains federal commodity and farm support policies, as well as other farm-related provisions, such as rural development, conservation, agricultural research, food aid and nutrition programs.
Farm programs: Generally meant to include the commodity programs administered by the Farm Service Agency, as well as the other U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that directly benefit farmers.
Farm-to-school: Sourcing foods served in school meal programs (K-12) from local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals and supporting local and regional farmers.
Farmer’s markets: Farmer’s markets are venues where agricultural and food producers sell directly to consumers.
Farmland: Land used for agricultural purposes. The United States has had roughly 1 billion acres of farmland.
Feed the Future: A new U.S. foreign assistance program that supports agricultural development initiatives. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the program in 2009, pledging $3.5 billion over three years to 20 targeted countries.
Food bank: A charitable organization that solicits, receives, inventories, stores and distributes food and grocery products from various sources to other charitable organizations.
Food insecurity: Uncertain availability or inability to acquire safe, nutritious food in socially acceptable ways.
Food security: Assured access to enough nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life with dignity.
Fruit and vegetable planting restrictions: Planting for harvest of fruits, vegetables, and wild rice is prohibited on base acres of commodity program participants, except in certain situations specified in farm legislation.
Greenhouse gases (GHG): Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Some greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide occur naturally and are emitted into the atmosphere through natural processes and human activities. Other greenhouse gases (e.g., fluorinated gases) are created and emitted solely through human activities.
H-2A: An agricultural work program that provides admission of alien guest workers to the United States on a nonimmigrant basis to perform agricultural work of a seasonal or temporary nature.
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010: Authorizes funding for federal child nutrition programs and increases access to healthy food for low-income children. The bill that reauthorizes these programs is often referred to by shorthand as the child nutrition reauthorization bill.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS): A natural sweetener created by converting glucose in corn starch to fructose. HFCS production expanded during the 1980s as a substitute for higher-cost beet and cane sugar used in soft drinks.
Hunger: A condition in which people do not get enough food to provide the nutrients (carbohydrate, fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals) for fully productive, active and healthy lives.
Income support: Programs providing direct, income-supplementing payments to farmers and intended to protect farm income without affecting market prices.
Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food: A USDA-wide effort to strengthen local and regional food systems.
Let’s Move: Program developed by First Lady Michelle Obama to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.
Local and regional purchase: Sourcing food aid nearer to the location of the recipients, providing the ability to act quickly and effectively in cases where a rapid food aid response is critical to saving lives.
Low birth weight: Children born weighing 2,500 grams (5 pounds, 8 ounces) or less, being especially vulnerable to illness and death during the first months of life.
Malnutrition: The condition that occurs when people’s diets do not provide adequate nutrients for growth and maintenance or they are unable to fully utilize the food they eat due to illness. Malnutrition includes being underweight for one’s age, too short for one’s age (stunting), dangerously thin for one’s height (wasting), deficient in vitamins and minerals (micronutrient deficiencies), and severely overweight (obesity).
Micronutrients: The vitamins, major minerals and trace elements needed for a healthy, balanced diet.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): A set of objectives to improve the quality of life for all people, first laid out in a series of international conferences in the 1990s, then officially adopted by the United Nations in 2000 with the Millennium Declaration. The goals serve as a road map for development by 2015.
Monetization: The process of selling U.S. food aid in local markets of developing countries to get the cash needed for development programs. These programs may be run by well-meaning organizations, but monetization has the effect of distorting local markets and thereby hurting farmers in these countries.
National School Lunch Program: Provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost lunches that are free to children in households with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty and reduced price for those in households with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of poverty.
Organic farming: An approach to farming based on biological methods that avoid the use of synthetic crop or livestock production inputs and on a broadly defined philosophy of farming that puts value on ecological harmony, resource efficiency, and non-intensive animal husbandry practices.
Poverty-focused development assistance: Foreign assistance that directly affects the lives of hungry and poor people such as programs that immunize children, train teachers, build water wells, schools, and rural roads, and provide agricultural training to help farmers increase their productivity.
Producer: An owner, operator, landlord, tenant, or sharecropper who shares in the risk of producing a crop and is entitled to share in the crop available for marketing from the farm, or would have shared had the crop been produced.
Program crops: Crops for which Federal support programs are available to producers, including wheat, corn, barley, grain sorghum, oats, extra-long staple and upland cotton, rice, oilseeds, peanuts, and sugar.
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA): The daily dietary intake level of a nutrient that is considered sufficient to meet the requirements of nearly all healthy individuals in each life-stage and gender group.
Renewable fuels: Broadly, renewable fuels are made from replenishing feedstocks (such as biomass, sunlight, wind, water, and waste products) in contrast to exhaustible (nonrenewable) feedstocks such as petroleum and coal. Renewable fuels are a subset of alternative fuels.
Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS): A policy proposal whereby motor fuels in the United States would be required to contain a certain percentage or volume of renewable fuels.
Revenue insurance: Provides farmers protection against losses in revenue. Revenue is determined by the income earned from all farm activities, minus operating costs. Operating costs include capital-intensive investments such as farm equipment and inputs like seeds, fertilizer and fuel to run the equipment. Land prices also must be accounted for when determining revenue. Revenue insurance makes up the difference when revenues fall below the break-even point.
Safety nets: Government policies and charitable programs designed to ensure basic needs are met among low-income, disabled and other vulnerable social groups. Safety nets may also provide protection against risks, such as lost income, limited access to credit or devastation from natural disaster.
School Breakfast Program: Provides nutritional meals to students at participating schools (and to children in a few residential child care institutions). Certified low-income students receive free or reduced-price breakfasts
Section 32: USDA program that distributes surplus agricultural commodities, mostly to child nutrition programs.
Smallholder farmer: A farmer who works a small plot of land, generally less than five acres. The greatest number of people living in extreme poverty consists of smallholder farmers and their families.
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC): Safeguards the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk. The WIC program provides monthly packages of nutritious foods, information on healthy eating, and referral to health care.
Specialty crops: Fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, nursery crops, and horticulture crops.
Stunting: Failure to grow to normal height caused by chronic undernutrition during the formative years of childhood.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Previously the Food Stamp Program, SNAP supplements the food budgets of low-income households with monthly benefits in the form of an electronic benefits card that they can use like cash at authorized retail stores.
Sustainable agriculture: A systematic approach to farming intended to reduce agricultural pollution, enhance natural resource and financial sustainability, and improve efficiency.
Undernutrition: A condition resulting from inadequate consumption of calories, protein and/or nutrients to meet the basic physical requirements for an active and healthy life.
Value-added: Agricultural products that have increased in value because of processing; such products include wheat flour and soybean oil. Livestock are considered value added products because they have increased the value of pasture and feed grains going into them.
Value chain: The full sequence of activities or functions required to bring a product or service from conception, through intermediary steps of production, transformation, marketing, and delivery to the final consumers.
Wasting: A condition in which a person is seriously below the normal weight for his or her height due to acute malnutrition or a medical condition.
World Food Program (WFP): The specialized agency of the United Nations providing logistical support necessary to get food to the right people at the right time in response to emergency food shortages and in development work.
World Trade Organization (WTO): The international organization established to oversee international trade agreements and settle disputes between member countries. Currently there are 153 member countries.
