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United States Department of Agriculture
Industry: Government
Number of terms: 41534
Number of blossaries: 0
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The form of aquaculture where fish, shellfish, or aquatic plants are cultured in a salt water environment.
Industry:Agriculture
(1) A request from a brokerage firm to a customer to bring margin deposits up to initial levels; (2) a request by the clearinghouse to a clearing member to make a deposit of original margin, or a daily or intra-day variation payment, because of adverse price movement, based on positions carried by the clearing member.
Industry:Agriculture
The amount of money or collateral deposited by a customer with a broker, by a broker with a clearing member, or by a clearing member with the clearinghouse, for the purpose of insuring against loss on open futures contracts. The margin is not partial payment on a purchase. (1) Initial margin is the total amount of margin per contract required by the broker when a futures position is opened; (2) maintenance margin is a sum that must be maintained on deposit at all times. If the equity in a customer’s account drops to, or under, the level because of adverse price movement, the broker must issue a margin call to restore the customer’s equity. Sometimes called a performance bond.
Industry:Agriculture
Currently, packers and processors are not required to report the prices they pay for the animals they buy from producers or the terms of sale. Rather, daily sales and price information is collected by AMS from companies on a voluntary basis. AMS reporters also attend live cash market sales (auctions) to collect price information. However, as more and more animals are sold under formula pricing, other contract, or captive supply arrangements, the open cash markets have become less helpful as benchmarks of prices being paid. Some producers believe that such arrangements also enable packers to more easily conceal potential anti-competitive practices, and argue that more transparency (i.e., more readily and widely available price and sales information) is needed in livestock markets. This has led to various legislative proposals for mandatory price reporting. Although the proposals have differed, most essentially would require packers to report, immediately and publicly, the prices they paid for animals, and the terms of the sale.
Industry:Agriculture
A human condition that results from an excess, imbalance, or deficit of nutrients. It is generally defined as some measurable degree of ill health due to inadequate nutrition that can be prevented or cured by improved nutrition. Malnutrition can include starvation and result in protein deficiency, iodine-deficient goiters, tooth decay, osteoporosis, and other conditions. It may also include obesity, some types of arteriosclerosis, hypertension due to excess sodium, anemias due to lack or iron, folic acid, or vitamin B-12, as well as classic nutritional deficiencies that cause scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, xerophthalmia, and rickets.
Industry:Agriculture
The margin between the government support price for milk and the CCC’s purchase price for butter, nonfat dry milk, and cheese. This margin is administratively set to cover the costs of "making" milk into butter, nonfat dry milk, or cheese to reach the desired level of prices for milk in manufacturing uses.
Industry:Agriculture
Major land resource areas are geographically associated land resource units delineated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service and characterized by a particular pattern that combines soils, water, climate, vegetation, land use, and type of farming. There are 204 MLRAs in the United States, ranging in size from less than 500,000 acres to more than 60 million acres.
Industry:Agriculture
Alternative methods of farming that reduce the application of purchased inputs such as fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. The goals of these alternative practices are to diminish environmental hazards while maintaining or increasing farm profits and productivity. Methods include crop rotations and mechanical cultivations to control weeds; integrated pest management strategies such as introducing harmless natural enemies; plating legumes that transform nitrogen from the air into a form plants can use; application of livestock manures, municipal sludge, and compost for fertilizer; and overseeding or legumes into maturing fields of grain crops, or as post-season cover crops to curtail soil erosion.
Industry:Agriculture
A common term for tree measurement sales.
Industry:Agriculture
The FAO defines LIFDCs as nations that are 1) poor - with an annual net per capital income below the level the World Bank uses to determine eligibility for IDA assistance; currently that level is US$1,505 per person; 2) Net importers of food. In many cases, these nations cannot produce enough food to meet their needs and lack sufficient foreign exchange to purchase food on the international market. Currently, the FAO list 83 nations as LIFDCs - 42 in Africa, 24 in Asia, 7 in Latin America and the Carribean, 7 in Oceania, and 3 in Europe.
Industry:Agriculture