The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations. It is dedicated to leading international efforts to defeat hunger worldwide.

Farm-free production systems refer to systems that generate food or types of fuel or fibre that are conventionally produced by agricultural systems but which are not produced on a farm. An example of a farm-free production system is the production of cellular meat in a bioreactor. While advocates of farm-free production systems tend to point towards potentially radical reductions in agricultural land use to produce a certain amount of food (or other products), farm-free production systems can be based on the use of ingredients (such as corn starch or soy protein) that are derived from more land-intensive production systems.

Farmer field schools allow farmers to acquire skills and knowledge through participatory and hands-on learning. They are designed to facilitate experimentation and discussion amongst farmers and to encourage the uptake of more sustainable production practices. This approach is favoured by the UN FAO, and has long been an important feature of agroecology movements.

Feed conversion efficiency is a measure of how much feed is required to produce a certain amount of a desired output. Such outputs may be animal weight, the amount of milk or meat produced, or even nutritional value measured in calories or grams of protein. It is a metric used to compare animal breeds and species in terms of their ability to convert feed into food available for human consumption.

A feedlot, also known as a feed yard, is a system used in intensive meat production. The basic principle of the feedlot is to increase the amount of weight/fat gained by each animal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Animals are kept in confined quarters and are commonly fed a grain-based diet such that they fatten rapidly prior to slaughter. Feedlots are commonly used in large-scale, intensive ruminant (notably beef cattle) farming. They are primarily associated with the beef industry in the US, Canada, and Australia but are rapidly spreading elsewhere (especially in South American countries like Brazil).

Food additives, including colourants, flavour enhancers, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and preservatives, are substances that are added to foods to preserve them or to enhance their taste and appearance. A food additive may have nutritional value but is not normally consumed as a food by itself. Generally not considered to be food additives are herbs, spices and substances such as micronutrients (for example iron or vitamin B12) that are added solely to improve a food’s nutritional qualities. Many food additives have a long history and are derived from food ingredients or non-food substances that have traditionally been used for processing foods (e.g. chalk or beetroot juice colourant). Others are produced using chemical synthesis (e.g. aspartame and synthetic vitamins). Some question the health impacts of certain additives from this latter group. Many national and international health authorities regulate additives by banning their use and by defining intake limits.

An alternative term to food desert, promoted by a growing number of activists, that places a greater focus on systemic historical and structural issues associated with race and socio-economic status that limit peoples’ access to affordable, nutritious, and healthy food. Food apartheid can be seen as a more descriptive term that considers how racial, economic, and structural issues within the food system intentionally deny certain communities, particularly Black and ethnic-minorities, access to nutritious foods. The term and associated movement are credited to Karen Washington a Black urban gardening activist from the Bronx (see article here).

The food chain is a hierarchical network constituted by the succession of organisms that eat other organisms and may, in turn, be eaten themselves. The position an organism occupies in a food chain is indicated by its trophic level. Plants, algae, and phytoplankton constitute the lowest trophic level, whereas predators and carnivores constitute the highest trophic levels. Many humans consume food from different trophic levels, while those following vegetarian and vegan diets consume all or most of their food from the primary trophic level.

A food desert is an area where peoples’ access to affordable, nutritious, and healthy food (particularly fresh fruits and vegetables) is limited or non-existent, primarily due to barriers to purchasing fresh food such as lack of affordable local stores and markets or lack of accessible transportation options to reach other purchasing options. The presence of food deserts is often correlated with the socio-economic status of residents – they are prevalent in ethnic minority, low-income communities lacking adequate access to transportation. In contrast, an area with greater access to affordable, nutritious, and healthy food may be described as a food oasis. Food deserts are often associated with urban areas and some activists and experts assert that food deserts are a symptom of systemic discrimination; see Food apartheid.

A food frequency questionnaire is a dietary assessment tool commonly used in nutrition research that consists of a questionnaire in which participants are asked to answer questions relating to the frequency with which they consumed certain foods and drinks during a selected time period, e.g. a week, month or year. Food frequency questionnaires can be long or short and interviewer- or self-administered. They are commonly used to investigate the dietary patterns of large populations, and unlike 24-hour recalls, they can measure the consumption of foods that are eaten incidentally or occasionally. Limitations of food frequency questionnaires include their reliance on participants’ ability to accurately recall the foods and drinks they have consumed over a relatively long period, and the possibility of social desirability bias (e.g. people may over-report their consumption of foods they think are healthy or sustainable).

Food justice is defined as the right of communities everywhere to produce, process, distribute, access, and eat good food regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, ability, religion, or community. The food justice movement emerged in the 1990s in the US, primarily amongst Black and ethnic-minority urban communities, to highlight in particular the racialised nature of inequalities within the food system.

Food preservation encompasses the processes and techniques that are used to prevent food from spoiling, including canning, pickling, salting, drying, smoking, chilling, fermenting, pasteurising, and the addition of chemicals such as sodium benzoate (which dissolves in food as an acid). These measures inhibit the growth and survival of microorganisms that spoil food. Food preservation can be understood as a form of food processing.

Food processing, defined by stakeholders in many different ways, broadly refers to modifications made to raw food ingredients after they have been gathered or harvested and before they are consumed or prepared for consumption in a kitchen. Examples of food processing include the pickling of vegetables, smoking or mincing of meat, pasteurisation of milk, milling of wheat, and the hydrogenation of oils. By this definition, most foods are processed in some way (e.g. to improve their taste, extend their shelf-life, make them edible or increase their nutritional value), but there are growing concerns over the health impacts of industrially processed foods.

Food security is an idealised state or goal where all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Food sovereignty is a political movement that emphasises the rights of food producers, distributors and consumers to have control over the food system, as opposed to corporations and market institutions. It has been defined as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

Forest degradation is the long-term reduction in the overall capacity of a forest to produce or provide benefits, such as carbon storage, biodiversity, wood, and other products due to environmental and anthropogenic alterations.

Fortification refers to the addition of micronutrients to foods to improve their nutritional quality. For example, micronutrients such as iron, zinc, or vitamins A and B may be added to rice or white bread. Fortification is seen as a way of improving the nutritional status of a population.

Fortress conservation is an approach to conservation that is based on the belief that goals for nature conservation are best achieved by the establishment of (large) nature reserves that are (largely) inaccessible to humans. Fortress conservation is controversial both for its assumption that the protection of biodiversity would be best served by creating isolated conservation areas and because it can go hand-in-hand with – and has historically done so – harms to rural and indigenous communities (e.g. displacements or even ethnic cleansing) who inhabit areas that are or were turned into fortress conservation projects.

An economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand, and there is little to no intervention from government or external authorities. The term is tightly linked to the concepts of market liberalisation and neoliberalism.

When talking about soil, friability describes the ability of a mass of soil to disintegrate, break apart, or crumble into smaller fragments under applied stress. Essentially a friable soil has a crumbly texture.

A functional unit refers to the product, service, or system whose impacts are calculated by a life-cycle assessment (LCA). Common examples of food-related functional units are 1 kg of beef, 100 calories of food, or 1 ha of land. The choice of functional unit influences an LCA’s results and care is needed when comparing the results of LCAs with different functional units. The functional unit is defined in the first phase of a life-cycle assessment study – that of goal and scope definition.