This tag was created by Maria Frank. The last update was by Food and Society Workshop.

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Field Guides to Food

The Food System

What are the major patterns of behavior, structures of sense-making, and physical spaces that shape actions? Are there few of these in play--or many? If an artifact points to forces larger than the individual actor, it deals with the theme of the Food System.

There are several ways of looking at the term food system:

Citing a 2007 APA paper, the 2013 CURA food narrative notes, "Food system is a term used to describe the range of agents, activities, and processes that are involved in growing, processing, distributing, selling, eating and disposing of food."
- An alternative vocabulary for describing the above processes would be "production, transformation, transportation, access, and consumption" [CITE?]
In "Food Sovereignty in Northern Minnesota," Dawn Plumer explains that a food system can include "water, gardening, agriculture, hunting, gathering, home canning, food safety, fast food restaurants, fad diets, the grocery store clerk, food banks, preparing dinner, refuse collection, and obesity" (2009, p. 4)

Most definitions vary in the scope and specificity of the elements included, as above. Some include factors external to other definitions or not explicitly considered...

In "A Primer on Community Food Systems: Linking Food, Nutrition and Agriculture," Cornell University defines it as "all processes involved in keeping society fed; ie, growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food and food packages... [The food system] includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each step... [and] operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, and natural environments. Each step is also dependent on human resources that provide labor, research, and education."

...and some focus on the global or local food system, and/or include social and environment considerations.

Cassidy and Patterson (2008) define a local food system as "a food system in which everyone has financial and physical access to culturally appropriate, affordable, nutritious foods that were grown without degrading the natural environment, and in which the general population understands nutrition and the food system in general."

Related terms: supply chain, agribusiness, scale, systems / systems thinking, networks

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Contents of this path:
1. Actors
2. The Food System
3. Food Actions and Strategies Nobody believes that the food system perfectly addresses all needs. Some individuals and groups actively work to turn their dissatisfaction into action with the intent to create systemic change. If people specifically describes their work in terms of activism or the “food movement,” or if they lay out specific, intentional strategies used to influence the food system, they are referring to “Food Actions and Strategies”.
  
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Ways of representing food in context so that the systemic nature of food relationships is revealed.

As a new practice or value grows in popularity and becomes commonplace over time, it sometimes becomes an organizing force in society. When this happens, practices and values take on the characteristics of a “social institution”. Artifacts that trace this process within a food system deal with institutional structure.

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Examples and processes related to the ways that people are gaining knowledge about food in its systemic context.

We all borrow food practices and values from other people. But what are the channels through which we do this? Under what conditions do some people become teachers, and others learners? Items that describe social patterns in these channels and conditions help to explain how “structures of information and knowledge” become a factor shaping the food system.

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