Glossary

Urban Agriculture

1. UA is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food within the urban limits of a village, town, or city. UA can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture.

2. The growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities. The most striking feature of urban agriculture, which distinguishes it from rural agriculture, is that it is integrated into the urban economic and ecological system.

3. Practice of growing plants and raising animals beyond that which is strictly for home consumption or educational purposes, production, distribution, and marketing of food and other products within the core of metropolitan areas and at their edges.

Agriculture

1. The production of food and goods through farming.

Community Food Security

1. A condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance, social justice and democratic decision making.

2. A state in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally appropriate, nutritionally sound diet and clean water through an economically and environmentally sustainable food and water system that promotes community self-reliance and social justice.

Community-based Food System

1. A food system in which everyone has financial and physical access to culturally appropriate, affordable, nutritious food that was grown and transported without degrading the natural environment, and in which the general population understands nutrition and the food system in general.

Compost

1. A dark, crumbly, soil like material made from decomposed (or decomposing) organic matter, such as animal manure, food waste, leaves, and grass clippings. Compose is applied to soil as a nutrient-rich fertilizer for plants.

2. Organic material that can be used as a soil amendment or as a medium to grow plants. Mature compost is a stable material with a content called “humus” which dark brown or black and has a soil-like earthy smell. It is created by combining organic wastes in proper ratios into piles, rows, or vessels.

Composting

1. A managed process by which fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms to decompose organic matter, such as animal manure and food waste.

Culturally appropriate food

1. Food that is compatible with the traditions, values, beliefs, taste preferences, and ingredients associated with a particular culture or religion.

Equity

1. Justice, fairness, or freedom from bias.

Fertilizer

1. Material spread on soil to increase the land’s capacity to promote plant growth. Common fertilizers include animal manure, compost, synthetic (human-made) chemicals, and certain minerals.

Field to plate

1. The span of activities from food production through consumption.

Farmers’ market

1. A farmers market operates multiple times per year and is organized for the purpose of facilitating personal connections that create mutual benefits for local farmers, shoppers, and communities. To fulfill that objective, farmer’ markets define the term local, regularly communicate that definition to the public, and implement rules/guidelines of operation that ensure that the farmer’ market consists principally of farms selling directly to the public products that the farms have produced.

Food Access

1. A food-security concept that includes availability or adequacy of supply of healthy food; accessibility or the location of the food supply and the distance to that location (can refer to a community level or within a household); affordability refers to food prices and people’s perception of worth relative to the cost; acceptability or people’s attitudes about attributes of their local food environment and degree that local food meets certain personally held standards; and accommodation or how well local food sources accept and adapt to local residents’ needs, such as store hours and types of payments accepted.

Food Deserts

1. Areas with low access to healthy food, commonly low-income urban or rural areas without nearby supermarkets.

Food Distributers

1. Intermediaries who pick up food from producers or processors, temporarily store it in large (often refrigerated) warehouses, and transport it to supermarkets, restaurants, and other retailers.

Food Hub

1. A centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.

Food Miles

1. The distance food travels from where it is grown or raised to where it is purchased by consumer.

Food Policy

1. Any legislative or administrative decision made by a government agency business or organization that effects how food is produced, processed, distributed, and purchased, or designed to influence the operation of the food and agriculture system.

Food Policy Councils

1. A group of individuals that advised local and state governments on matters related to food policy.

2. Often created through legislation, to convene key stakeholders to evaluate their areas’ food systems and make recommendations.

Food Processing

1. The practices used by food industries to transform raw plant and animal materials, such as grains, produce, meat, and dairy, into products for consumers. Examples include freezing vegetables, milling wheat into flour, and frying potato chips. Slaughtering animals is sometimes considered a form of food processing.

Food Security

1. Consistent access to enough safe, nutritious food for an active, healthy life, without resorting to emergency food programs, scavenging, or stealing.

2. Access by all household members at all times to enough food and potable water for an active, healthy life. Including the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, ability to acquire acceptable food in socially acceptable ways, and regular access to a safe and clean water supply.

Foodshed

1. Geographical area between where food is produced and where food is consumed.

2. A geographic area that supplies a population center with food.

3. Measures the reach of the local landscape in terms of its food production capacities. It’s size is determined by its “structures of supply”, the regional, economic, political, and transportation systems that determine how food get from farm to table.

Food System

1. The people, activities, resources, and outcomes involved in getting food from “field to plate,” in addition to preparing and eating food.

2. All processes involved in keeping society fed; ie, growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food and food packages.

Health Disparities

1. A type of difference in health that is closely linked with social or economic disadvantage. Health disparities negatively affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater social or economic obstacles to health. These obstacles stem from characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion such as race or ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, sex, mental health, sexual orientation, or geographic location. Other characteristics include cognitive, sensory, or physical disability.

Health Equity

1. When all people have the opportunity to attain their full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of their social position or other socially determined circumstance.

Hunger

1. The pain, discomfort, weakness, or illness caused by a long-term lack of food.

2. Hunger is an extreme form of food insecurity, which the inconsistent access by an individual at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

Irrigation

1. Human-made methods of delivering freshwater to agricultural fields. Irrigation techniques include the use of flooding, canals, sprinklers, and drip tape (a hose with small holes that releases water slowly).

Local Food

1. Food that was produced within roughly 100 to 250 miles of where the consumer lives, or food that is sold directly from a farmer to a consumer or nearby retailer. The term has no strict definition.

Manure

1. Animal waste used as fertilizer.

Pest

1. An organism that threatens human interests. Common pests in agriculture include certain plants (weeds), insects, fungi, rodents and bacteria that can kill crops or interfere with their growth.

Pesticides

1. Natural or synthetic chemicals used to kill, repel, or control populations of target organisms (“pests”); includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides.

Public health

1. The science and practice of protecting and promoting the health of communities, as opposed to focusing on individual patients.

Regional Food

1. Food that was produced within the region where the consumer lives. A region can defined by geographic, cultural, or political boundaries rather than size. Regional food systems include, but are not limited to, local food systems.

Supply chain

1. The people, activities, and resources involved in getting food from farm to plate. Major stages along the supply chain include production, processing, distribution, retail, and consumption.

Sustainable

1. Able to be maintained in the long term. Agriculture, for example, must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just to be sustainable.

2. The capacity of being maintained over the long term and meeting the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability to meet the needs of future generations.

Sustainable Food

1. Sustainable foods are produced by farmers and ranchers who care for the health of their animals and the land; sourced locally and seasonally directly from family farms or farm cooperatives; cooked from scratch to minimize processed ingredients; and good for the environment, the people who grow it, and the people who eat it.