WHAT IS THE FOOD SYSTEM?
Today our global food system faces major challenges, including how to feed a growing world population, how to reduce rural poverty in the world, and how to manage global environmental change. Traditionally, components of modern production and consumption systems have been assessed or analysed to improve the efficiency of a particular element or activity, based on the assumption that this will also improve the efficiency of the whole system. However, over the last few decades it has become clear that a more holistic framework is needed to address these complex issues. As a result, a food systems approach has been widely adopted to identify, analyse and assess the impact and feedback of different parts of the whole food system to help identify intervention points for enhancing food security.
The food system therefore includes not only the basic elements of how we get our food from farm to fork (or bin), but also all of the processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population. Systems can also exist within systems. For example, farming systems, agricultural ecosystems, economic systems, and social systems, health systems, and within those are further subsets of water systems, energy systems, financing systems, marketing systems, policy systems, culinary systems, cultural systems, and so on.
In order to plan sustainable, equitable, and healthy food systems for the future, we require integrated and innovative analytical methods and approaches from a range of disciplines, as well as effective intersectoral policy analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement.
