Anyone who has worked on food or studied food in the past decade has found themselves faced with the term food systems. But what are they? And why should we think about food this way? Why do we need to ‘transform’ food systems, and what does this mean?
In a series of posts, I’ll explain the concept of food systems, sustainable food systems, and the idea of transforming food systems to be greener and healthier for all. Then, I’ll write about Canada’s food systems, why people say that they need to be transformed, and what this could look like.
Food systems: since when?
Food historian Rachel Laudan points our that the term food system became more commonplace in the 1980s. She writes that this represents a shift in how we frame food, from simply a commodity to feed people, to one that includes a supply chain from inputs, through production and processing, all the way to consumption and food waste, including, of course, people’s food security. Also, there was a recognition that food supply chains are embedded in complex social, political and ecological contexts.
Recognizing this shift, new definitions of food systems arose. The definition of food systems from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is:
“Food systems encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products that originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader economic, societal and natural environments in which they are embedded.” (Nguyen 2018).
This framing is used by multilateral agencies like the United Nations, academic publications like Nature Food, etc. However, there is another important piece to consider: a fundamental assumption.
Putting the ‘system’ in food systems
The way the UN FAO and many people understand food systems is as inclusive of complicated, interrelated factors that can be broken down, mapped and measured as composite parts. The first step in food systems work, then, becomes mapping and measurement. However, is this a proper understanding of food systems? I would argue: no.
I love this recent paper by Samara Brock at Yale, who writes about the contested nature of food systems, and how some people go beyond a mappable understanding of food systems toward more foundational systems thinking in order to make sustainable change.
Systems thinking rests on several humble assumptions, including one that systems and their interrelated parts might not be completely knowable, or mappable. There may be ecological processes, human and ecological interactions, or power struggles that even the best facilitator cannot uncover. And that’s okay! The crucial piece, then, in understanding a food system, comes from dialogue between different types of people, being mindful and transparent of who is included and who is not; what topics are discuss and what are not.
I think the FAO definition of food systems is just fine, as long as we add a caveat that food systems are dynamic, with parts that we may never completely understand.
In my next post, I’ll explore why food systems need to be transformed, then dive into what this transformation is all about.
Source: Nourish