Sec. 3. Definitions
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In this Act: The term Administrator means the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. The term agricultural development means methods to use agriculture as a basis for food and nutrition security, family livelihood, and economic growth by increasing the productivity of those involved in the cultivation of food, fuel, and fiber, conserving the environment and natural resources, and improving the economic livelihoods of those involved, including farmers, fishers, foresters, and pastoralists, particularly those that operate on a small scale, and linking them and their products to markets, including post-harvest activities such as storage, processing, transport, and improving market efficiency.
The term appropriate congressional committees means— the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate; and the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives. The term chronic food insecurity means ongoing and persistent lack of access to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The term ecosystem services means natural goods, services, and processes that the environment provides and on which people depend and from which they benefit, such as pollination, water cycles and regulation, pest control, and soil formation.
The term extreme poverty means income of less than one-half of the poverty level as defined by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the relevant year. The term food security means the condition of having, at all times, access to nutritious, affordable, sufficient, and safe food to maintain a healthy and active life. The term malnutrition means poor nutritional status caused by nutritional deficiency or excess. The term resilience means the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to, recover from, and withstand events that result in social disruption and economic hardship.
The term rural infrastructure — means public and private facilities and services necessary for agricultural production and other activities in non-urban (rural) areas; and includes roads or other means of transportation, water supplies including irrigation, rural electrification, communication technology, financial services, storage, warehousing, and processing facilities needed for increasing agricultural production and linking producers to markets, including policies and regulations of such sectors in addition to physical infrastructure.
The term smallholder refers to farmers with a low asset base, limited resources including land, capital, skills and labor, and farming less than 5 hectares of land. The term strategy means the United States Comprehensive Global Food Security strategy outlined in section 102. The terms stunted and stunting mean a condition— of being too short for one’s age, with a height-to-age ratio that is more than 2 standard deviations below the median for the population; caused by poor diet and frequent infections, occurring before age 2, and is a sign of chronic malnutrition; and leading to long-term poor health, delayed motor development, and impaired cognitive function and decreased immunity.
The term undernutrition — means several outcomes of insufficient food intake, such as being underweight for one’s age, too short for one’s age (stunted), dangerously thin for one’s height (wasted), or deficient in vitamins and minerals (micronutrient malnutrition); and can be identified by anthropometric indices (underweight, stunting, and wasting) or by the missing micronutrients in poor-quality diets. The term Voluntary Guidelines means the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, adopted with the leadership of the United States throughout the negotiation process, in May 2012 at the Special 38th Session of the United Nations Committee on Global Food Security.
The objective of the Voluntary Guidelines is to improve food security through land governance for the benefit of all, with an emphasis on vulnerable and marginalized people. The term wasting , with respect to an individual, means the condition of weighing too little for such individual’s height. Wasting indicates both long- and short-term nutritional deprivation. Wasting is a traumatic process of substantial weight loss that is usually associated with starvation or serious disease.
Wasting is calculated by comparing a child’s weight-for-height with those of a reference population of well-nourished and healthy children. Because wasting is strongly related to mortality, wasting rates are often used to indicate the severity of hunger emergencies.