Local Food Systems
Food system refers to how food is produced and reaches consumers, and consumer food choices. It subsumes the terms ‘food chain’ and ‘food economy’, which are both too narrowly linear and/or economic. The food system can be broken down to three basic components: biological, economic/political, and social/cultural. The biological refers to the organic processes of food production; the economic/political refers to institutional moderation of different group's participation in and control of the system, and the social/cultural refers to the "personal relations, community values, and cultural relations which affect peoples use of food."
Local food systems are an alternative to the global corporate models where producers and consumers are separated through a chain of processors/manufacturers, shippers and retailers. They "are complex networks of relationships between actors including producers, distributors, retailers and consumers grounded in a particular place. These systems are the unit of measure by which participants in local food movements are working to increase food security and ensure the economic, ecological and social sustainability of communities."
Read more about this topic: Local Food
Famous quotes containing the words local, food and/or systems:
“Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk
Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday
The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women,
Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives
Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden
Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons
Back now, all of them, to their local lives....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself; he kills to adorn himself; he kills in order to attack and he kills to defend himself; he kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself; he kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“We have done scant justice to the reasonableness of cannibalism. There are in fact so many and such excellent motives possible to it that mankind has never been able to fit all of them into one universal scheme, and has accordingly contrived various diverse and contradictory systems the better to display its virtues.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)