The Food Systems Approach: Sustainable Solutions for a Sufficient Supply of Healthy Food
Systems thinking is an interdisciplinary approach that broadens perspectives when designing sustainable solutions for issues like food supply. This article discusses the usefulness of mapping food systems and how applying systems thinking to food security and production helps identify the best opportunities for more efficient use of natural resources while shedding light on the tradeoffs between different intervention strategies.
How can a systems approach lead to better policymaking and more sustainable solutions?
4 Mapping the food system
4.1 Food system activities
The food system activities, which are shown in more detail in Figure 2, consist of five components: the food supply system (the value chain), the enabling environment, business services, the food environment, and consumer characteristics. These components are explained briefly below.
The value chain is at the heart of the food supply system: value is added in each step of the chain, from production, storage and transport, and processing, to retail and consumption. Agricultural production has traditionally been at the center of the food supply system, given that 50% of the world's labor force works in that sector. In terms of added value, the emphasis of production chain activities is increasingly shifting to transport, processing or retail.
The food supply system is embedded in an enabling environment that creates the conditions in which the system functions. Transport, regulation, institutions, and research infrastructure are part of this environment.
Business services, while not at the heart of the value chain, provide services and goods to the actors in the chain. This can involve training, agricultural inputs, technical support, or financial services.
Just as the enabling environment and business services support the production, transport, and processing industry, there are also two system support components at the retail and consumer level:
the food environment and consumer characteristics.
The food environment comprises a number of determining environmental factors, such as the extent to which a product is advertised or the information on labels or quality seals determines the consumer's relationship to that product.
At the bottom of Figure 2 are the characteristics of consumers, who – through their knowledge, available time, resources (purchasing power), age, sex, culture, religion, etc. – develop certain preferences that influence their food choices.
Figure 2 Food system activities