- Industry: Government
- Number of terms: 41534
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
This refers to an organization serving the food needs of the poor and unemployed that is designated by a state as eligible for commodities and administrative support to distribute commodities or operate a meal service program under the Emergency Food Assistance Program.
Industry:Agriculture
This Act is P.L. 98-92 (September 2, 1983) which amended the original Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Act (TEFAA) of 1983 to authorize multi-year funding and commodity donations from excess CCC inventories of foodstuffs for food distribution by emergency feeding organizations serving the needy and homeless. It subsequently was amended in 1985, 1988, 1990, and 1996 (under the FAIR Act of 1996) and currently authorizes funding through FY2002 to buy and donate commodities and to provide grants for state and local costs of transporting, storing, and distributing them to emergency feeding organizations, soup kitchens, and food banks serving low-income persons. In addition to discretionary funds authorized to be appropriated by this law, the welfare reform law of 1996 required that $100 million of food stamp appropriations be used annually to buy commodities for emergency feeding organizations.
Industry:Agriculture
This program provides USDA commodities to emergency feeding organizations to help with the food needs of low-income populations. It also authorizes grants to states to help with the state and local costs of transporting, storing, and distributing the commodities. In addition to authorizing funding to buy commodities for these programs, the program also requires that $100 million of food stamp funds be used annually for that purpose. The program is authorized through FY2002 by the Emergency Food Assistance Act of 1983, as amended by the FAIR Act of 1996. Eligible agencies include food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, and public and private charitable agencies serving the poor. States determine the agencies eligible to participate and set low-income standards for eligibility.
Industry:Agriculture
The USDA was given permanent authority by the Disaster Assistance Act of 1988 to implement an array of emergency livestock feed programs. These programs were designed to assist livestock producers who lose a significant amount of feed grown on the farm due to a natural disaster. The primary livestock feed programs implemented by USDA were: (1) the Emergency Feed Assistance Program (EFAP), which provided farmers who experienced a large loss of feed production with government-owned grain at a subsidized price, and, (2) the Emergency Feed Program (EFP), a cost-share program for farmers affected by a disaster who purchased their needed feed in the marketplace. To meet mandated budget savings requirements, the FAIR Act of 1996 suspended these programs from the law through 2002.
Industry:Agriculture
Authorized in 1993 under emergency supplemental appropriations to respond to widespread floods in the Midwest, EWRP provided payments to purchase easements and partial financial assistance to landowners who permanently restored wetlands at sites where the restoration costs exceeded the land’s fair market value. EWRP was administered by Natural Resources Conservation Service as part of its Emergency Watershed Program and operated in seven midwestern states. Land in this program is considered to be a part of the land enrolled in the Wetland Reserve Program.
Industry:Agriculture
A program originally authorized by the FACT Act of 1990, and titled the Emerging Democracies Program. The program was authorized to promote U.S. agricultural exports by providing technical assistance and credits or credit guarantees to emerging democracies annually for fiscal years 1991-95. Funds could be used to establish or provide facilities, services, or U.S. products to improve handling, marketing, storage, or distribution of imported agricultural products. The program initially focused on central and eastern Europe and the form Soviet Union. The FAIR Act of 1996 reauthorized the program through 2002 and renamed it the Emerging Markets Program. The program is retargeted to emerging markets (defined as countries that USDA determines have the potential to provide viable and significant markets for U.S. agricultural products). The law authorizes $10 million per year and the Commodity Credit Corporation must make available not less than $1 billion of direct credit or credit guarantees to emerging markets for fiscal years 1996-2002, in addition to the amounts authorized for GSM-102/103.
Industry:Agriculture
Waste released or emitted to the environment. The term is commonly used in referring to discharges of gases and particles to the atmosphere, i.e., air pollutants, and also is used in referring to particles or energy released radioactively. Sometimes the term is used broadly, encompassing any pollutant discharge.
Industry:Agriculture
Species of animals or plants likely to go extinct in the foreseeable future unless current trends are altered. They are listed by regulation under the Endangered Species Act and assigned the Act’s highest level of protection. Only scientific factors may be taken into account in deciding whether to list a species as endangered, though economic factors may be taken into account at other stages of the Act. See also threatened species. For the legal definition, see Section 3 of the Act.
Industry:Agriculture
This Act is P.L. 93-205 (December 28, 1973), as amended, is one of the major federal laws protecting species and the ecosystems on which they depend. While states generally have primacy in wildlife law, this is one of a handful of areas in which federal law plays the major role. ESA is administered primarily by the Fish and Wildlife Service (and by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for certain marine species). Under authority of this Act, species of plants and animals at risk of extinction are listed as either "endangered" or "threatened" according to the degree of risk. Once a species is listed, powerful legal tools are available to aid the recovery of the species and to protect its habitat. Over 1000 species of domestic animals and plants have been listed as either endangered or threatened. The ESA has been controversial for two main reasons: First, its standards of protection are substantive, rather than procedural, occasionally preventing activities that would lead to the taking of an endangered or threatened species or jeopardizing its continued existence. Thus, the protection of endangered salmon may result in limitations on logging around spawning habitat. Even if a given activity is rarely prohibited outright, mandatory changes or modifications of practices are not infrequent. Second, because other laws often lack the strict substantive provisions that Congress included in the ESA regarding taking of species, critical habitat, and avoidance of jeopardy, the ESA often becomes a battleground by default over larger controversies concerning resource scarcities and altered ecosystems. Like the miners’ canaries, endangered species have flagged controversies over the Tellico Dam (hydropower development versus farmland protection and tribal graves, as well as the snail darter); northwest timber harvest (protection of logging jobs and communities versus commercial and sport fishing, recreation, and ecosystem protection, as well as salmon and spotted owls); and the Edwards Aquifer (allocation of water among various users with differing short- and long-term interests, with a few spring-dependent species caught in the cross-fire). Farmers, ranchers, and loggers can be affected by ESA in various ways, depending on the particular listed species, the locale, the nature and health of the ecosystem, the ownership of the land, etc. On federal land, ESA may require land managers to restrict or modify resource uses to protect listed species; on private land, ESA prohibits takings and requires agencies providing any Federal service — such as permitting, increasing irrigation flows, or loans — to ensure the action will not adversely affect critical habitat.
Industry:Agriculture
A chemical agent that interferes with natural hormones in the body. Hormones are secreted by endocrine glands (such as the pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, ovary, and testis), are transported through the body in the bloodstream, and regulate body growth and metabolism, other endocrine organs, and reproductive functions. There is emerging concern that endocrine disruptors may be causing human health or ecological effects, such as abnormal thyroid function, decreased fertility, and alteration of immune and behavioral function. This concern arises from demonstrated instances (an example is the ability of diethylstilbestrol (DES) to disrupt female reproductive function throughout the lifespan in laboratory animals and humans) and the fact that hormones are biologically active at very low concentrations (at parts per billion or less), so low levels of disruptors may similarly be biologically active. In amendments to the Safe Drink Water Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act in 1996, Congress directed the Environmental Protection Agency to study endocrine disruptors. The outcome of this research will be of consequence to agriculture because some pesticides and animal growth stimulants have been hypothesized to act as endocrine disruptors.
Industry:Agriculture
