Farm recordkeeping glossary

Records and traceability

Lot: The addressable unit of a harvest: a quantity of product that shares a history and can be referred to as one thing. Everything downstream — a customer, a recall, an audit — is addressed to a lot. Read more →
Lot code: The identifier assigned to a lot. It has one job: to mean something to a stranger a year later, without a phone call. A code assigned at the loading dock rather than at harvest identifies nothing useful. Read more →
One up, one back: The principle that every operator must know their immediate supplier and their immediate customer for each lot. If every link in a supply chain can do that, the whole chain is traceable without anyone holding the whole chain. Read more →
Traceability packet: A record that joins a harvest lot backward to the inputs applied to it and forward to the customers who received it. It is a view of joins you already made; it cannot invent one you did not. Read more →
Mock recall: A rehearsal in which you pick a lot that has left the farm and trace it in both directions under a clock. It is the only honest test of traceability, and the clock is usually what fails, not the answer. Read more →
Commingling: Combining two or more lots so they can no longer be distinguished. The result is a single lot carrying the worst attributes of its parents, and it destroys traceability quietly. Read more →
Contemporaneous record: A record written at the time of the event it describes, rather than reconstructed later. The distinction matters because a reconstructed record carries the authority of writing without the accuracy of memory. Read more →
Retention period: How long a record must be kept. Multiple obligations may reach the same record — a buyer, a certifier, a regulator — and the longest of them governs the whole file. Read more →

Crops and inputs

Active ingredient: The chemical in a product that produces its effect. It matters more than the product name, because products get reformulated and renamed while tolerances are written against the active ingredient. Read more →
Re-entry interval (REI): The period that must pass after an application before a person may enter the treated area without specified protection. It is a constraint on people. Its length is set by the product label, and it varies by product, formulation, and jurisdiction. Read more →
Pre-harvest interval (PHI): The period that must pass after an application before the crop may be harvested. It is a constraint on the crop, running on a different clock than the REI. Its length is set by the product label. Read more →
Application record: The record of an input applied to a crop: the product and its active ingredient, the rate actually applied, the lot number, the field, the date and time, the applicator, the conditions, and both intervals with the calendar dates they end. Read more →
Tank mix: Two or more products combined in one sprayer load. It creates two records, not one, and the more restrictive interval among them governs the entire pass. Read more →
Calibration: The test that establishes what a sprayer actually delivers. The rate written on an application record is a claim about a machine; calibration is what makes that claim true. Read more →
Planting: The record of what was actually put into the ground: the crop, the variety, the seed lot, the block, and the date. Distinct from a crop plan, which records what you intended. Read more →
Crop plan: A statement of intention written before the season. It is not a record of what happened, and confusing the two is why a season's paperwork stops reconciling. Read more →
Scouting observation: A dated note of what was seen in a field. Nothing forces it — no purchase, no sale — which is why it is the record most often skipped and most often wanted later. Its value lives in the pattern across notes. Read more →
Seed lot: The batch identifier of the seed planted. It is the first link in the traceability chain, and the fact a germination problem or a seed-borne recall reaches for first. Read more →

Livestock and residue

Withdrawal period: The interval that must pass between the last administration of a treatment and the point at which an animal's meat, milk, or eggs may enter the food supply. Its length is set by the product label and by the prescribing veterinarian — never by software, and never by a guide. Read more →
Withdrawal window: The span between a treatment and the date its withdrawal period ends. While an animal sits inside one, it must not be sold into the food supply. A record that merely warns about a window is weaker than one that refuses the sale. Read more →
Extra-label drug use: Administering a drug in any way other than exactly as its label directs. It does not extend the labelled withdrawal period proportionally — it voids it, and only a veterinarian can establish the replacement. Read more →
Residue: The remainder of an administered substance present in an animal product. Residue violations are almost never decisions; they are the result of a record that was not present at the moment of the sale. Read more →
Treatment log: The record of what was administered to which animal or group: the product, its strength and lot number, the dose actually given, the route, the date and time, who administered it, and the withdrawal period with the date it ends. Read more →
Animal event: Any dated occurrence attached to an animal or group — a treatment, a weight, a breeding, a movement, a death. Events are the atoms of a livestock history, and they are only useful if they all resolve to the same identity. Read more →
Group: A set of animals managed and recorded together. The group is usually the right unit of record, until the moment it hides the individual animal you needed. Read more →
Ear tag: An animal's identifier, and in database terms its primary key. A farm that reuses a tag number has corrupted its own history, because two animals now share one identity. Read more →

Certification and audits

Organic system plan (OSP): The document in which a farm describes, in advance, the practices it will follow to maintain organic certification. It is a promise; the records are the only evidence the promise was kept. Read more →
Audit trail: The chain of records that lets a reviewer follow a sold product backward through packing, harvest, field, and inputs to the seed or animal it came from. It is followed backwards, which is why the oldest records matter most. Read more →
Corrective action: The record of a problem you found and what you did about it. Counterintuitively, an empty corrective action log is a warning sign: it reads as a farm that is not looking rather than a farm with nothing to find. Read more →
Buffer zone: Land maintained between certified organic production and an adjoining risk, such as a neighbour's spray. Its record documents ground you do not farm and events you did not cause. Read more →
Split operation: A farm producing both certified and non-certified product. Everything turns on separation being documented rather than merely intended, in storage, in equipment, and in the field record. Read more →
Transition period: The stretch of time a parcel must be managed under organic practice before its product may be sold as organic. It is a continuous claim about a period, most of which no inspector ever saw. Read more →
Supplier approval: The record establishing that you know, and have vetted, who sent something onto your farm. It is the 'one back' half of traceability, and an informal supplier is still a supplier. Read more →

Money

Enterprise: A distinct production activity within a farm — a crop, a field, a livestock group — treated as its own economic unit. The farm can be profitable while an enterprise inside it is not, and the whole-farm number will never say which. Read more →
Cost of production: What it actually cost to produce a unit — an acre, a bushel, a weaned calf. It is only as honest as the allocation of shared costs beneath it, and as the discipline of tagging each expense to the enterprise that incurred it. Read more →
Cost allocation: Dividing a shared cost — a tractor, a barn, a loan — across the enterprises that used it. There is no correct basis, only a defensible one, and writing down which basis you chose is the part that matters. Read more →
Unpaid operator labour: The hours the owner works without a paycheque. Leaving it out of a cost of production makes the result flattering and useless; counting it is the whole point of the exercise. Read more →
Break-even: The yield or price at which revenue equals cost. It looks like analysis, but it is really your cost of production restated, and it inherits every weakness of the cost side. Read more →

People and safety

Labor log: A record of hours worked. It answers two questions for two different readers — payroll, and what the work cost the enterprise — and most farms only ever keep it for the first. Read more →
Certification expiry: The date a worker's qualification lapses. Like a withdrawal date, it is a fact about the future: a filed certificate proves the past, but only a list sorted by expiry protects the day after it ends. Read more →
Pesticide handler: A person who mixes, loads, or applies pesticides, or who handles treated material. Their training and certification records carry dates, and those dates constrain what they may legally do tomorrow. Read more →
Incident record: The account of an injury or near-miss, written on the worst day and read months later by someone who was not there. Facts first, opinion kept separate, specific enough to be understood without you in the room. Read more →

Definitions describe practice, not obligation. Intervals, retention periods, and certification requirements are set by the product label, your certifier, and your regulator — see our editorial standards. Browse all guides.