Glossary terms through the site will be hyperlinked to this page
A
Adaptation
Changing practices or systems to better suit new conditions (e.g., planting grapes that ripen later to avoid the peak heat of summer).
Autonomous
To be autonomous as a human means to be able to govern yourself, to be able to make decisions and have the ability and authority to act on them. It is similar for autonomous vehicles and machinery. Autonomous machinery can sense its environment and make decisions to perform tasks without human intervention.
B
Beneficials
Insects, spiders, mites, and other organisms that provide natural ecological service, primarily pest control and pollination, reducing the need for chemical pesticides and improving crop yields.
Biological Control
This is a method of controlling pests or weeds by using living things that are natural predators or consumers of the pest organism. The aim is usually to restore balance to the ecosystem rather that to achieve total eradication. This approach can be cost effective and environmentally friendly, but there are examples of biological control that have gone very wrong, such as the introduction of the cane toad to control cane beetle.
Biological Resistance
Biological resistance in Australian farming is essentially "survival of the fittest" in action. Without IPM or IWM, pests, weeds, and diseases are constantly exposed to the same chemicals, allowing them to adapt and survive, making those treatments useless
Biosecurity
The policies and procedures used to stop the entry of, or slow the spread of harmful pests, invasive species or diseases.
Bolus
A large dose of medication given to an animal in pill or capsule form
Broadacre Farming
A large-scale, mechanised agricultural system widely used in Australia, focused on producing high-volume commodities like grains (wheat, barley), oilseeds (canola), and pulses across extensive areas of land, often exceeding thousands of hectares.
C
Carrying Capacity
This is the maximum, sustainable number of animals or crops a specific land area can support over a long-term period without degrading the soil, water, or vegetation resources
Commodities
A crop or raw material that can be sold. Examples in Australian agriculture include; wheat, beef, wool, canola, wine, sugar, cotton, barley, and various fruits/nuts such as almonds, bananas, and oranges.
Condition Score
A visual assessment of an animals fat and muscle reserves against a chart or descriptors and scored on a scale. Dairy Australia provides a handbook for condition scoring dairy cattle on a scale of 1 to 8. For example it states that "A cow with a BCS of 1 is considered extremely thin, the result either of severe under-feeding or disease. While a cow with a BCS of 8 is considered extremely fat and is at risk of several metabolic diseases after calving.."
Control Group
The part of the enterprise that remains unchanged, acting as a baseline for comparison.
Cover crops
Non-harvested plants grown to benefit soil health, suppress weeds, prevent erosion, and improve fertility by covering bare ground between cash crops. Cover crops can add organic matter, fix nitrogen (legumes like peas and beans do this), and improve soil structure with their roots. They act as a living mulch that supports biodiversity and water infiltration for healthier, more productive land. Common examples include rye, vetch, clover, oats, and radishes.
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation started out as the Advisory Council of Science and Industry in 1916 and is responsible for many innovations and inventions that have improved the lives of people all over the world, not just in Australia.
Cultivars
Cultivar is short for "cultivated variety". This term describes a plant variety deliberately selected by humans for specific, desirable traits, such as colour, size, flavour, or disease resistance, that remains consistent when propagated. Unlike wild plants, they are maintained through cloning, grafting, or controlled breeding to ensure genetic uniformity
D
Data-Driven Decision Making
The process of making farming choices (e.g., when to harvest or irrigate) based on the analysis of collected data (from sensors, satellites, or drones) rather than relying solely on intuition or tradition.
Disease resistance
This is the genetic ability of a pant or animal to be unaffected (or less severely affected) by a pathogen (bacteria, fungus or virus).
Down cow
A cow that is unable to stand. She has usually been down for several hours and can not rise even when firmly encouraged. This is usually a symptom of a seroius illness.
E
Ethics
This concerns the moral implications of food production, distribution, and consumption, focusing on areas such as environmental sustainability, animal welfare, worker rights, and health.
F
Fallow
A pasture or paddock that has been left to rest without a crop, for a season.
Flystrike
A severe, often fatal condition where blowflies lay eggs in wet, or soiled, sheep wool, hatching into maggots that eat the skin and tissue.
G
GPS Guidance / Auto-steer
Technology that uses Global Positioning Systems to navigate machinery with centimeter accuracy. This reduces "overlaps" (spraying/seeding twice) and "gaps" (missing spots), leading to higher resource efficiency.
Green Bridge
Weeds and self-sown crop volunteers that survive between growing seasons, usually in a neighbouring paddock or just outside the fence line where they are not harvested, slashed or grazed. This creates a bridge between growing seasons with the plants acting as a living host for pests and diseases so that it can survive until the following crop becomes a suitable host in the next season.
Grower levy
A mandatory, government-imposed charge on specific agricultural products (such as vegetables, fruit, or nursery plants) produced in Australia.
I
Input
Any resource used in the production process, such as seed, fertilizer, water, chemicals, fuel, and labor.
Internet of Things (IoT)
A network of physical objects ("things") embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet.
M
Metabolic Disease
An internal breakdown in an animal caused by an imbalance in the animal’s diet or body chemistry. For example, milk fever is caused by a lack of calcium in the bloodstream.
Metazoal Pest
Refers to conditions caused by multicellular parasites, such as worms, lice, and ticks.
Metrics
Standards of measurement used to track performance (e.g., kg/ha or $/ML of water).
Microbial Disease
Any disease caused by microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that damage the host
Mitigation
Actions taken to reduce the severity of a problem, such as using cover crops to mitigate soil carbon loss.
Mulesing
A surgical procedure performed on lambs to remove strips of skin from the breech/tail area to prevent flystrike
N
Narrow Windrow Burning
NWB is a Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) technique where harvester chutes concentrate chaff and straw into narrow 50-100 cm rows. These rows are burnt in autumn, with temperatures exceeding 400°C for at least 10 seconds, destroying over 95-100% of weed seeds (e.g., annual ryegrass, wild radish).
Noxious Weed
A noxious weed is a legal designation for an invasive plant that is harmful to agriculture, ecosystems, or human health, requiring mandatory control by law.
P
Parasite Burden
See also Worm Burden
The total quantity of parasitic worms living within a host organism, such as a sheep. A higher burden, meaning a greater number of parasites, typically causes more severe nutritional deficiencies, gastrointestinal damage, anaemia, and reduced productivity.
Partnership
A collaborative arrangement between two or more parties (e.g., a university and a farming group) to achieve a specific research goal.
Pre-emergent herbicide
A preventative chemical applied to the soil to stop weed seeds from germinating or emerging.
Precision Agriculture (PA)
A management strategy that uses digital technology and data to observe, measure, and respond to variability in crops, livestock, and soil. The goal is to optimize returns on inputs while preserving resources.
Protected Cropping
Cropping methods that utilise structures such as greenhouses, glasshouses, polytunnels, or netting to grow crops under modified environments.
Provenance
This refers to the origin of food, covering how it is grown, raised, caught, processed, and transported. You may have heard the marketing terms "from paddock to plate" or "from farm to fork:".
Q
Qualitative Data
Data that describes characteristics or qualities (e.g., worker satisfaction or soil texture).
Quantitative Data
Data that can be counted or expressed numerically. (e.g., tonnes of wheat or litres of water)
R
Resilience
The capacity of an agricultural system to absorb shocks (like drought) and still maintain productivity.
Resistance
While this may mean disease resistance (in the glossary under D), it can also refer to the development by weeds and pest species, of less and less sensitivity to control methods such as chemical sprays or other agents, over the course of generations.
RDC (Research & Development Corporation)
Industry-specific bodies (like Wine Australia or Meat & Livestock Australia) that invest grower levies (see glossary entry on this page) and government funds into research.
S
Scouring (or The Scours)
Scouring (diarrhoea) in livestock, particularly young calves, is a major cause of death, severe dehydration, and economic loss.
Site-Specific Crop Management (SSCM)
A form of precision agriculture where decisions on resource application (water, fertilizer, seed) are tailored to match the specific requirements of different areas within a single field or paddock, rather than treating the whole field uniformly.
Soil compaction
Soil is made up of rock particles, water, organic matter and air. The small spaces of air are important to allow water to enter and leave and to allow plant roots to grow. When soil is compacted, the particles are compressed together and there may be very little space between them. This means that the soil restricts water movement and plant root growth, dramatically reducing the yield of any pasture or crops.
Stocking rate
The actual number of animals grazing a particular area.
Synthetic fertilisers
Man-made, industrially produced substances designed to deliver precise, high-concentration nutrients directly to plants. Unlike organic fertilisers, they are chemically formulated for immediate absorption, providing rapid growth boosts for agriculture and gardening.
T
Threshold
It is a key concept in Integrated Pest Management (IPM), representing the point where the cost of control (e.g., pesticides, labour, application) is lower than the value of the crop damage that would occur if no action is taken.
V
Value-adding
Adding additional features or processing to a product, so that consumers are willing to pay more for it. For example, turning wheat into flour and then into bread. You would pay more for a 600g loaf of bread than 600g of wheat. At the time of writing this, wheat is returning about 30c a kg while a loaf of very cheap bread is about $4.00 per kg ($2.60 for a 650g loaf)
Variable Rate Technology (VRT)
The specialised machinery and software that allow for the automated, real time adjustment of input application rates (like chemicals or fertiliser) across a site based on data maps or sensor readings.
Vector/s
living organisms, most commonly mosquitoes, ticks, flies, and fleas, that transmit infectious pathogens (viruses, bacteria, parasites)
W
Weed
Any plant growing where it isn't wanted. See also noxious weed
Windrow
A windrow is any long, narrow row of cut hay, grain, or other material (like snow or compost) arranged to dry, cure, or be collected.
Worm Burden
See also Parasite Burden
The total quantity of parasitic worms living within a host organism, such as a sheep. A higher burden, meaning a greater number of parasites, typically causes more severe nutritional deficiencies, gastrointestinal damage, anaemia, and reduced productivity.
Y
Yield
The amount of agricultural or horticultural product produced per unit of land (e.g., tonnes of wheat per hectare or boxes of apples per orchard row).