Operating costs or operational costs, are the expenses which are related to the operation of a business, or to the operation of a device, component, piece of equipment or facility. (Wikipedia, 2024. Operating cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_cost)
The benefit foregone by using a scarce resource for one purpose instead of its next best alternative. Typically applied to capital and labour inputs to reflect their real costs to society as against their costs to a private entrepreneur, which may be lower or higher because of subsidies, taxes and various kinds of market distortions. (FAO. 2008. Glossary of aquaculture. https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/a1555m)
Feudalism refers to a type of socio-economic organization of society as a whole, a mode of production and of the reproduction of social classes. It is defined in terms of the social relationships by which its two fundamental social classes constitute and maintain themselves. Specifically, the peasants, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the producing population, maintain themselves by virtue of their possession of their full means of subsistence, land and tools, so require no productive contribution by the lords to survive. (Brenner, R. (1990). Feudalism. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) Marxian Economics. The New Palgrave. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20572-1_25)
Pastoral societies are those that have a disproportionate subsistence emphasis on herding domesticated livestock. (http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/BooksOnline/He5-95.pdf)
Pollution by agriculture is the release of harmful substances from agricultural sources into the environment. Agricultural pollution refers to biotic and abiotic byproducts of farming practices that result in contamination or degradation of the environment and surrounding ecosystems, and/or cause injury to humans and their economic interests. (Adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_pollution)
The total process of planning, collecting, compiling, evaluating, disseminating and analyzing demographic, economic and social data at the smallest geographical level pertaining, at a specified time, to all persons in a country or in a well-delimited part of a country. (FAO. 2017. World Programme for the Census of Agriculture 2020. Volume I Programme, concepts and definitions. https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/i4913e)
A price support may be either a subsidy, a production quota, or a price floor, each with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level, usually by a government. In agriculture, a farm policy tool that creates a floor under actual market prices for a commodity, requiring the purchaser to pay at least a minimum price. (Adapted from Wikipedia. 2025. Price support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_support and National Family Farm Coalition. 2022. Glossary. https://nffc.net/resources/glossary/)
Investments made in private companies or other assets that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange. (Riemer, O., Mairaj Shah, T. & Müller, A. 2023. The role of true cost accounting in guiding agrifood businesses and investments towards sustainability – Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2023. FAO Agricultural Development Economics Working Paper, No. 23-13. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc8422en)
