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A food system is a web of activities that involve growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposal of food. This activity happens at a local, regional, and global level. It’s the journey of your food from a seed or animal, all the way to your plate and beyond. A break in one part of the web affects all the others.
Food systems are often described using the phrase “farm-to-fork” which ignores all the other factors that go into who has access to food and why. There may be environmental, cultural, or economic reasons why not everyone has access to healthy food. Maybe you like to only buy local produce in season. Or, when the last grocery store left your neighborhood, you started a community garden. Or lack of a bus route near your home and nerve pain make shopping for healthy food a challenge.
Food systems can be both immensely powerful and extremely fragile at the same time. How these systems are designed can make inequities in our society worse and reinforce systems that keep people from succeeding.