Glossary

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🌾 1. Farming Systems & Food Production

Agroforestry
A farming system that combines trees with crops or animals. Trees help improve soil, store carbon, and provide habitats for wildlife. When animals are included, it may be called silvopasture.

Animal Farming (Animal Agriculture / Livestock Farming)
The practice of raising animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, or chickens for food, milk, eggs, wool, leather, or other products. This includes caring for, feeding, breeding, and managing animals on farms.

Animal Agriculture Industry
The system of raising, processing, and selling animals and their products on a large scale. This includes farms, workers, transport, factories, and businesses that produce meat, milk, eggs, leather, and wool.

Arable Farming (Crop Farming)
The practice of growing crops such as wheat, barley, rice, vegetables, or fruits. Arable farms focus on plants rather than animals and involve planting, tending, harvesting, and sometimes processing crops.

Community Farming (Cooperative Farming / Community-Supported Agriculture)
A system where local people work together to grow, manage, and share food. Community farms often focus on sustainable, small-scale, and locally adapted methods, including organic or vegan organic approaches.

Extensive Farming
Uses large areas of land with relatively few animals or crops per hectare. Often lower input and lower yield.

Factory Farming (Industrial Livestock Farming)
A type of intensive animal farming where large numbers of animals, such as chickens, pigs, or cows, are kept in small, confined spaces to produce meat, eggs, or milk quickly and cheaply.

Free-Range (Higher-Welfare Farming)
A farming system where animals have more space, access to the outdoors, and opportunities to behave naturally. Free-range methods aim to improve the welfare of animals compared with intensive or confined systems.

Greenhouse Farming
Growing crops in structures like greenhouses where temperature and conditions are controlled.

Hydroponic Farming (Soilless Farming)
A method of growing plants without soil, using water that contains all the nutrients plants need to grow. The water is carefully controlled for pH, minerals, and oxygen, which helps plants grow efficiently and often faster than in soil.

Intensive Farming
Uses high levels of inputs to produce high yields in a small area.

Market Gardens
Small-scale farms that grow fruit and vegetables mainly for local markets.

Mixed Farming
A farming system that combines both crop growing and animal farming on the same farm.

Nature-Friendly Farming
Works with nature by protecting wildlife, habitats, soil, and water while producing food.

Organic Farming
A method of farming that grows crops and raises animals without using synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, or chemicals. Organic farms often focus on natural processes, soil health, and biodiversity, and may be officially certified for commercial purposes.

Permaculture
Designing farms and gardens to copy natural ecosystems and reduce waste.

Precision Agriculture
Using technology such as sensors, GPS, computers, and drones to apply water, fertilisers, or pesticides only where needed.

Regenerative Farming
A way of farming that restores soil health, increases biodiversity, improves water systems, and stores carbon while producing food. It often involves rearing animals, such as grazing livestock, but can also be done without animals using plant-based methods like composting, cover crops, crop rotation, and mulching.

Vegan Organic Farming (Veganic Farming)
A type of organic farming that grows crops without using animals or animal by-products, including manure, bone meal, or fish fertilisers. Veganic farming relies on plant-based composts, crop rotation, green manures, and natural soil-building methods, and avoids synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and chemicals. It is sometimes called plant-based, stockfree or biocyclic farming, and some farms are officially certified for commercial food production.

Vertical Farming (Indoor or Stacked Farming)
A method of growing crops in layers or tall structures, often indoors, using artificial lights, controlled temperatures, and sometimes hydroponics, which saves land space, uses less water than traditional farming, and allows food to be grown near cities.

🌍 2. Environment, Ecosystems & Climate

Biodiversity
The variety of life within an ecosystem, including different species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, the differences within species, and the range of habitats they live in. Biodiversity helps ecosystems stay healthy and balanced by supporting food chains, soil quality, pollination, and natural cycles that allow life to continue over time.

Carbon Footprint (Food)
The total amount of greenhouse gases released during the production, processing, transport, and storage of food.

Carbon Sequestration
The process of capturing and storing carbon in plants, trees, and soil, helping to reduce climate change.

Climate
The average weather patterns over a long-term period (over 30 years at least).

Climate Action
Stepping up what we do, including increasing awareness and education, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impact climate change is already having.

Climate Change
Long-term changes in global or regional climate patterns, mainly caused by increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases released by human activities. Climate change includes global warming and its wider effects, such as melting ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels, changes to habitats, and more frequent extreme weather events like heatwaves, floods, and droughts.

Climate Crisis
The serious problems caused by climate change, like floods, droughts, heatwaves, and storms, which are threatening people, animals, and nature. It shows that we need urgent action to protect the planet and everyone living on it.

Climate Justice
The idea that climate change is not just about science, but about fairness. It focuses on the people and communities who are most affected by things like floods, droughts, and extreme weather, often because they have fewer resources to adapt or protect themselves.

Deforestation
The clearing of forests to make space for farming, buildings, or roads.

Ecosystem
A community of living organisms (such as plants, animals, and microorganisms) and the non-living parts of their environment (such as air, water, soil, and sunlight) that interact with each other in a particular area.

Eutrophication
When too many nutrients, often from fertilisers or manure, enter rivers or lakes and cause excessive algae growth, reducing oxygen and harming aquatic life.

Global Warming
The long-term increase in Earth’s average temperature. Global temperatures have been rising since the early 20th century, with the most rapid warming occurring since the late 1970s. Global warming is mainly caused by greenhouse gases released by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation, which trap heat in the atmosphere.

Greenhouse Gases
Gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that trap heat and cause the planet to warm. The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, methane (CH₄) from livestock, landfill waste, and oil and gas extraction, and nitrous oxide (N₂O) from agriculture and some industrial activities. Other greenhouse gases include fluorinated gases, used in refrigeration and industry, and ground-level (tropospheric) ozone (O₃), a harmful gas formed when air pollutants react with sunlight. Ground-level ozone is often called “bad ozone” because it damages health and ecosystems.

Pollution
Harmful substances released into air, water, or soil that damage living things.

Soil Erosion
The loss of topsoil caused by wind or water, often made worse by poor farming practices.

Sustainability
Meeting current needs without damaging the environment or resources needed by future generations.

Sustainability Goals (UN SDGs)
Global goals designed to protect the planet and improve life for people worldwide.

Weather
Atmospheric conditions, such as rain or snow, happening in a place at a specific moment in time, as opposed to climate, which is how much, on average, a type of weather will occur over a longer period.

🌱 3. Soil, Plants & Crop Science

Agrochemicals
A category of synthetic substances, including pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilisers, used in modern agriculture to protect crops and improve growth.

Composting
The process of breaking down plant and food waste, and sometimes animal manure, into compost, a stable, nutrient-rich material that improves soil structure, fertility, and water retention. Unlike raw manure, compost is fully decomposed and safer to use on crops, helping plants grow while recycling organic matter naturally.

Cover Crops
Plants grown to protect and improve soil rather than to be harvested.

Crops
Plants grown by farmers for food, fuel, or materials.

Crop Rotation
Growing different crops in the same field in different seasons to improve soil health and reduce pests.

Fertilisers
Substances added to soil to help plants grow. They can come from natural sources, like animal manure or compost, or be made artificially (synthetic), such as ammonium nitrate, one of the most common synthetic fertilisers used around the world.

Manure
Materials used in farming to improve soil by adding nutrients and organic matter.

Animal Manure – A mix of animal faeces, urine, and bedding like straw or wood shavings. Spread on fields as a natural fertiliser.

Slurry – A liquid form of animal manure, made from faeces and urine mixed with water, often from cleaning animal housing. Stored in tanks or lagoons and spread on fields.

Sludge – A thick semi-solid waste from human sewage, industry, or food production (e.g., slaughterhouses, fish farms). May be treated or untreated; sludge is sometimes used on farmland under certain rules.

Green Manure – Plants grown to improve soil rather than for food. Cut down and mixed into soil to add nutrients and improve structure.

Monoculture
Growing only one type of crop over a large area.

Nitrogen-fixing Plants
Plants such as beans, peas, and clover that add nitrogen to the soil. These are usually legumes.

Nitrogen Cycle
The natural movement of nitrogen between the atmosphere, soil, plants, and animals.

Pesticide
A pesticide is a chemical or biological substance used to control or eliminate organisms (pests) like insects (insecticides), weeds (herbicides), fungi (fungicides) and rodents (rodenticides) that threaten crops, livestock, or stored produce.

Polyculture
Growing many different crops together in the same area.

Soil Health
The condition of soil, including nutrients, structure, and living organisms.

🐄 4. Animals, Biology & Welfare

Animal By-products (Farming Use)
Materials that come from farmed animals and are used within farming systems, such as manure or bone meal.

Animal Sanctuaries (for farmed animals)
Places where rescued farm animals live safely for their natural lifespan, without being used for food or profit.

Bioaccumulation
The build-up of harmful substances, such as toxic chemicals or pollutants, in the bodies of living organisms over time. These substances are absorbed from the environment or from the food animals eat, and they can become more concentrated as they move up the food chain, potentially affecting the health of predators at the top.

Compassion
Feeling concern for another’s suffering and being motivated to help. Studies in animal behaviour show that some animals, as well as humans, display helping or consoling behaviours linked to compassion.

Empathy
A brain-based ability to recognise and share the feelings of another individual. Research shows that humans and many animals can respond to the emotions of others, sometimes even across species.

Food Chains
Diagrams that show how energy moves between living organisms as one organism eats another.

Methane (CH₄)
A powerful greenhouse gas produced during digestion in animals such as cows, sheep and goats and from manure.

Natural Behaviour
Behaviours animals naturally show, such as grazing, nesting, or socialising.

Selective Breeding
Choosing plants or animals with certain characteristics to produce the next generation.

Sentience
The capacity to have feelings and experiences, such as pain, pleasure or fear. Scientific research shows that humans and many animals are sentient. Recognising sentience is important when considering how our actions affect living beings.

Welfare
The physical and mental wellbeing of an individual. In science, this includes how humans and animals cope with their environment, including health, comfort, behaviour, and emotional state.

🍽️ 5. Food Systems, Diets & Society

Food Miles
The distance food travels from where it is produced to where it is eaten.

Food Security
Having reliable access to enough safe and nutritious food to live a healthy life.

Food System
All the stages involved in getting food from farms to consumers, including growing, processing, transporting, selling, and eating food.

Omnivore Diet
A diet that includes both plant and animal foods.

Pescatarian Diet
A diet that includes plant-based foods and fish, but does not include meat from land animals. Some pescatarians also eat eggs and dairy.

Plant-Based Diet
A way of eating that focuses mainly or entirely on plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. A plant-based diet excludes or minimises animal products but does not necessarily involve ethical considerations or a fully vegan lifestyle.

Vegetarian Diet
A diet that includes plant foods and may include dairy and eggs, but not meat.

Vegan Diet
A diet that completely avoids all animal products, including meat, dairy, eggs, and honey. Unlike a plant-based diet, a vegan diet is often motivated by ethical, environmental, or health reasons.

🧠 6. Thinking Skills, Ethics & Measurement

Animal Rights
The ethical view that animals have moral rights and should not be treated simply as resources or property. This perspective argues that being sentient gives animals certain protections, regardless of human benefit.

Animal Welfare Ethics
The ethical view that humans may use animals (for example, in farming) but have a responsibility to minimise suffering and ensure good welfare.

Ethics (Food & Farming)
The study of what is right and wrong, and how we should act. In farming, ethics helps us consider the impact of our choices on animals, people, and the planet, encouraging care for animal welfare, fair treatment of workers, and protection of the environment.

Greenwashing
When a company makes its products or farming practices seem environmentally friendly, even if they are not. This can include using words like “natural,” “eco,” or “sustainable” without real evidence, or highlighting one small positive action to distract from larger environmental harm.

Humane Washing
When a company makes farming practices seem kind or animal-friendly through labels, images, or marketing, even though the animals may still experience confinement, stress, or poor welfare. It gives the impression of high welfare without meaningful changes to how animals are treated.

Systems Thinking
Looking at how different parts of a system such as farming, transport, animals, people, and the environment are connected and influence one another, rather than studying them separately.

Veganism
An ethical lifestyle choice that avoids exploiting or harming animals. Ethical vegans do not use or consume any animal products in food, clothing, cosmetics, or other everyday items. This way of living is guided by concern for animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and reducing harm to all living beings.

Water Management (Farming)
Using water efficiently on farms to reduce waste and pollution.

Yield
The amount of food produced from a given area of land. This includes crop yield (plants) and animal yield (meat, milk, eggs, or other products).