Sustainability Principles and Practice
Fourth Edition
agriculture
The practice of cultivating plants and animals as food crops.
agroecology
An interdisciplinary approach which applies principles of ecology to the practice of agriculture.
agroforestry
The intercropping of annual or perennial agricultural crops with trees or other woody plants.
aquaculture
The industrial farming of fish or seafood.
biointensive agriculture
An approach to producing high yields of food crops in small spaces using raised beds; also known as French intensive agriculture.
CAFO
Acronym for concentrated animal feeding operation, an industrial-scale facility for housing animals at high densities for feeding prior to slaughter; also known as a feedlot.
certification
A procedure by which a third party verifies the level of performance of a product, process or service compared to some standard.
community-supported agriculture (CSA)
An approach to supplying food in which customers buy subscriptions to local farms in return for regular deliveries of shares of the harvests.
conservation agriculture
An approach to growing crops based on 3 principles: crop rotation, protecting soil with cover crops and retained crop residue, and no-till.
factory farm
A large-scale animal factory.
feedlot
An industrial-scale facility for housing animals at high densities for feeding prior to slaughter; also known as a CAFO.
food desert
An urban area in which residents do not have ready access to healthy food.
food forest
A small-scale form of agroforestry in a multi-story combination of food-bearing trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals.
food miles
The distance from where a product is grown to where it is eaten.
food security
The state of having access at all times to sufficient, nutritionally adequate, and safe foods that meet dietary needs and food preferences.
foodshed
A geographic area within which the food for a population is produced, transported, and consumed.
food sovereignty
The right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food along with their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
foraging
The practice of gathering food found in public or common spaces.
genetically modified organism (GMO)
An organism whose genetic code has been altered in a way that could not have occurred naturally by mating or recombination.
gleaning
The practice of gathering food from leftover crops in farmers’ fields.
green revolution
The intensification of global food production in the mid-twentieth century based on technologies such as fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and high-yield crop varieties.
homegarden
A food forest in a tropical region.
industrialized agriculture
Large-scale farming using fossil fuel-driven machinery, large amounts of irrigation water, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and monoculture planting; also known as agribusiness.
irradiation
A food processing method in which food is exposed to a dose of radiation for the purpose of killing pathogenic bacteria and insects by disrupting their DNA.
monoculture
The planting of a single crop over a large area.
no-till farming
An approach to growing crops by planting in undisturbed soil covered by crop residues and other mulch.
organic agriculture
The general method of growing crops using environmentally healthy methods and without using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides; also known as organic farming.