A food system is made up of all the interconnected people, institutions, policies and infrastructure involved in feeding a population. It covers every stage from food production (sowing, growing, breeding and harvesting) to processing, packaging, distributing, marketing and consuming food, and disposing of food-related waste.
The inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps are also part of food systems. How food systems work has a wide ranging effect on society, and influences nutrition, food, health, community development, wellbeing, rural livelihoods and agriculture.
Food systems fall within the broad category of agri-food systems, which encompass the entire range of actors and interlinked activities in the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products. Food systems are often divided into conventional and alternative, depending on how food is produced, how it reaches the plate and how sustainable it is. A food system operates within and is influenced by cultural, social, political, economic, technological and environmental contexts. It also requires specialized and trained human resources that provide labor, research and education.Development Policy Review, 2003, 21 (5-6): 531-553 Food Policy Old and New - Simon Maxwell and Rachel Slater∗ The global food system, including all of the various industries involved in sustainable and conventional food systems, provides employment for 1 billion people. Food systems are highly dependent on a multitude of ecosystem services, such as soil formation, nutrient cycling, microorganisms providing nitrogen-fixation, natural pest regulation, water supply and pollinators.
The global food system is a major contributor to climate change. It is responsible for more than a third (34%) of total greenhouse gas emissions, and this is expected to increase by 30–40% by 2050 due to population growth and dietary change. In turn, climate change and other pressures also affect the global food system and threaten food security. Agrifood systems need to become more resilient so that, when disruptions occur, they can continue to provide sufficient, safe and nutritious food for all and sustain the livelihoods of the people who work in them.
Transitioning to sustainable food systems is critical for addressing global challenges such as climate change, hunger, biodiversity loss, and deforestation. Around 30–40% of food produced globally is wasted. Food loss and waste occurs throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Food waste also contributes to climate change by generating 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing food waste also reduces the environmental impacts of agriculture, such as land use impacts, and can lower food prices or prevent shortages.
Conventional food systems Conventional food systems are characterised by operating on economies of scale. These food systems are often oriented towards increasing productivity and reducing unit costs through maximizing efficiency in order to lower consumer costs and increase overall production. They utilize economic models such as vertical integration, economic specialization and standardization, increasingly extended supply chains and global trade. These systems have contributed to substantial increases in agricultural productivity and food availability. However, they have also been associated with soil degradation, biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as with the concentration of agri-food production and distribution, leading to deepening inequities in access to food.
The increasing degradation of the natural resources that food production depends on, such as soil, together with climate change and population growth, puts pressure on agricultural land and has driven efforts to raise productivity on the limited land available, including in cities.
Climate-smart agriculture has increased crop yield in some places, but limited knowledge of it, and the smallholder farming systems, hold back its wider use.
Impacts of conventional food systems The development of conventional food systems is directly responsible for decreased food prices and increased food variety. Agronomic efficiency is driven by the necessity to constantly lower production expenses, and those savings can then be passed on to the consumer. Also, the advent of industrial agriculture and the infrastructure built around conventional food systems has enabled the world population to expand beyond the "Malthusian catastrophe" limitations. Since 1961, food supply per capita has increased by more than 30%.
However, conventional food systems are largely based on the availability of inexpensive fossil fuels, which is necessary for mechanized agriculture, the manufacture or collection of chemical fertilizers, the processing of food products, and the packaging of the foods.Nestle, Marion. (2013). Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health." Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. The increase in the availability of food since 1961 has primarily been driven by an 800% increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers (which are fossil fuel dependent) and an over 100% increase in water usage.
These resource-intensive processes have wide ranging impacts. For example, food processing began when the number of consumers started growing rapidly. The demand for cheap and efficient calories climbed, resulting in nutrition decline. Also, industrialized agriculture, due to its reliance on economies of scale to reduce production costs, often leads to the compromising of local, regional, or even global ecosystems through fertilizer runoff, nonpoint source pollution,(1993); Schnitkey, G.D., Miranda, M.; "The Impact of Pollution Controls on Livestock Crop producers", Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and greenhouse gas emissions. About a third of the world's agricultural land is at high risk of pesticide pollution, and a third of these high-risk areas are in regions of high biodiversity.
The need to reduce production costs in an increasingly global market can cause the production of foods to be moved to areas where economic costs (such as labor, taxes) are lower or environmental regulations are looser, which are usually further from consumer markets. For example, the majority of salmon sold in the United States is raised off the coast of Chile, due in large part to less stringent Chilean standards regarding fish feed even though salmon are not indigenous in Chilean coastal waters.(2001); Bjorndal, T., "The Competitiveness of the Chilean Salmon Aquaculture Industry", Foundation for Research in Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway Moving food production to regions with weaker enforcement of labor protections has made it easier to exploit agricultural workers systematically and to create jobs, typically filled by migrants, that lack security and a predictable income. The globalization of food production can result in the loss of traditional food systems in less developed countries, and have negative impacts on the population health, ecosystems, and cultures in those countries.(1996); Kuhnlein, H.V., Receveur, O.; Dietary Change and Traditional Food Systems of Indigenous Peoples; Centre for Nutrition and the Environment of Indigenous Peoples, and School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University, Quebec, Canada As a result of these forces, around 645 million people are currently undernourished, and 2 billion adults are overweight and obese.
The issue of having minimal access to food, or access primarily to unhealthy food, is often described in terms of food security. Food security is often defined as a state in which "all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." Many groups argue that food security is largely determined by a given person's socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or other socially defined categories, making food access a social justice issue. This has given rise to numerous social movements whose goal is to increase access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods. These movements are often categorised as belonging to a wider food sovereignty and food justice movement.
Hidden costs The production and consumption of food in conventional food systems have significant negative effects on the environment, society and health, the costs of which are not reflected by the price of food products. These are called hidden or external costs. For example, the conventional production and consumption of food contributes to climate change, the poverty of agricultural workers, and health issues, all of which create costs to be paid by society, and which are not offset by being included in the price. Some hidden costs are harder to measure than others. Environmental effects such as greenhouse gas emissions are relatively easy to measure because data are widely available, while impacts on human and social capital, such as working conditions and effects on local communities, are harder to quantify.
There are many different estimates regarding the total hidden costs of global agrifood systems, ranging from USD 12 trillion to USD 19 trillion per year. Out of this, the hidden health costs of global food systems amount to USD 8.1 trillion. Diets low in whole grains are the leading contributor (18 percent of global health hidden costs), alongside diets high in salt and low in fruits (16 percent each), although there is significant variation across countries.
Alternative food systems Alternative food systems (also called alternative food networks) encompass initiatives that seek to reorganize food production, distribution, and consumption in ways that differ from conventional industrial food systems. They include farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, food cooperatives, buying groups, and other arrangements intended to reconnect producers and consumers. Characteristics distinguishing alternatives from conventional food systems include locality, short supply chains, and direct producer–consumer relations. Some alternative food networks use intermediaries between producers and consumers rather than selling directly.
Sustainable food systems
A sustainable food system is a type of food system that provides healthy food to people and creates sustainable environmental, economic, and social systems that surround food. Sustainable food systems start with the development of sustainable agricultural practices, development of more sustainable food distribution systems, creation of sustainable diets, and reduction of food waste throughout the system. Issues around the sustainability of food systems includes land use: around 69 million hectares of land are used each year to produce food that gets lost or wasted before reaching consumers and is ultimately not consumed. Sustainable food systems have been argued to be central to many or all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
The global food system is facing major interconnected challenges, including mitigating food insecurity, effects from climate change, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, malnutrition, inequity, soil degradation, pest outbreaks, water and energy scarcity, economic and political crises, natural resource depletion, and preventable ill-health.
Local food systems