Introduction to the food system

The food system is every activity and organisation involved in getting food from its source to the people who eat it, and in planning the foods of the future. Food & Nutrition groups these activities into five sectors. Each sector depends on the others, so a decision in one sector (for example, choosing a new packaging material) creates effects in the rest.

• Production: growing, raising, catching or harvesting raw materials, such as cropping wheat, farming dairy cattle, fishing or growing tomatoes in a greenhouse.
• Processing: changing raw materials into food products or ingredients, from simple steps such as washing and packing lettuce to complex steps such as milling, pasteurising, canning or baking.
• Distribution: moving and storing food between sectors, including transport, warehousing, cold storage and retail display in supermarkets, markets and online delivery.
• Consumption: purchasing, storing, preparing and eating food in homes, schools, restaurants and workplaces.
• Research and development (R&D): innovation, new product development and applied scientific or technological research that makes future products possible, such as breeding a disease-resistant crop, reformulating a snack to lower its sodium, or designing a shelf-stable plant-based drink.

To trace a food, follow it step by step through the sectors and name what happens, where it is stored and how it is moved at each step. Storage and transport occur many times, not only once, so a good trace shows the links between sectors rather than a single straight line. R&D often sits at the start (developing the product) but also feeds back from consumption, when consumer data shapes the next version.