What is a Food System?
The term "food system" is used to describe all the activities involved in producing, processing, transporting, storing, selling, and eating food. It also includes "waste management" activities like composting or landfilling food scraps.
Many people describe the food system in terms of five major sectors:
1. Production
This includes growing edible plants and raising animals such as cows and chickens.
2. Processing
This is the part of the food system where raw food materials are transformed into finished food products, like bread, packaged frozen peas, or salsa.
3. Distribution
This includes all the ways food is transported, stored, and marketed on its journey from farm to consumer.
4. Consumption / Retail
This includes not only purchasing food, but also cooking, preparing, and presenting food, and finally eating (or otherwise using) food.
5. Waste Management / Resource Recovery
This includes all the ways discarded food materials are collected, sorted, and processed. This could mean composting food scraps to return leftover nutrients to the soil (creating a "closed loop" system), or sending food scraps to a landfill (a "dead end").
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