Key Economic and Environmental Concepts
Aquaculture
Aquaculture is the set of activities, techniques, and knowledge of the culture of aquatic plants and animals. Farming systems are diverse, freshwater or seawater, and range from growing directly in the environment to fully controlled facilities. The most common crops include planktonic organisms (microalgae, Artemia), macroalgae, mollusks, and crustaceans.
Balance of Payments
The balance of payments is an accounting document that systematically records business operations, services, and capital movements carried out by residents in a country with the rest of the world during a specified period, usually one year. The difference between income and payments of a particular sub-scale is called its balance.
Alternative Energy
Alternative energy, or more precisely an alternative energy source, is one that can replace current energy sources, either because of its lower polluting effect or, primarily, due to its potential for renewal.
Intensive Farming
Intensive farming maintains business-like control over animals (selected for a particular skill), providing the necessary resources (food, labor, facilities, etc.) to optimize production.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the most important policies and one of the essential elements of the institutional system of the European Union (EU). The CAP manages the subsidies given to agricultural production in the EU.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Gross domestic product measures the monetary value of the production of final goods and services of a country during a period (usually one year). GDP is used as a measure of the material well-being of society.
Recycling
Recycling could be defined as obtaining raw materials from waste.
Industrial Restructuring
Industrial restructuring is a shock treatment, intensive and short-term, reforming the industries most affected by the crisis to ensure their competitiveness. It tries to match supply with demand through all measures (regulation of temporary employment, definitive layoffs, early retirement, etc.).
Acid Rain
Acid rain is formed when moisture in the air combines with air pollutants emitted by factories, power plants, and vehicles. Interacting with water vapor, these gases form sulfuric acid and nitric acid. Finally, these chemicals fall to earth accompanied by precipitation, forming acid rain.
Land Consolidation
Land consolidation is the grouping of parcels owned into the smallest possible number of them.
Industrial Pollution
Industrial pollution is the introduction of a contaminant from waste of industrial activity, which results in harm or discomfort in an ecosystem, in the physical environment, or in a living being.
Trade Deficit
Trade deficit: Trade Balance = Exports – Imports. This difference could be positive (which is called a trade surplus) or negative (which is called a trade deficit).
Economy
Economy: Economic activity that is not illegal but hidden for reasons of tax avoidance or administrative control, distinct from illegal economic activities.
Energy Sources
Energy sources are natural resources or assets capable of producing some kind of energy to perform a specific job or obtain some use.
R&D
The term R&D, short for Research and Development, can refer to research or development engineering, which seeks an increase in innovation leading to increased sales for businesses.
Commodity
A commodity is one that is used to directly meet the specific needs of the end consumer and what it takes. Examples of consumer goods are housing (durable consumer goods) and food (non-durable consumer goods). Consumer goods industry: those that produce these goods.
Inflation
Inflation, in economics, is the sustained and widespread increase in the prices of goods and services.
Smallholding
A smallholding is a country house with such a small extension that it hinders its exploitation.
Fishing Area
A fishing area is an area where you can conduct fisheries of aquatic animals.
Rainfed Agriculture
Rainfed agriculture is one in which humans do not contribute to water, but use only that which comes from rain.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is an economic and social transformation in which the population employed in the tertiary sector (services) becomes larger than that in the secondary sector (industry), and also the way of work in this sector is spread to all others, becoming outsourced.
European Union (EU)
The European Union (EU) is a group of democratic European countries that have pledged to work together for peace and prosperity. Today, the EU comprises 27 countries. Its currency, the euro, is the second most important currency after the dollar in international markets.