As shown in the My Plate icon, the five food groups are fruits, vegetables, cereals, protein foods, and dairy products. The food industry is the complex network of farmers and various companies that, together, supply much of the food consumed by the world's population. Although there is no formal definition of the term, the food industry covers all aspects of food production and sale. It includes areas such as agriculture and livestock, agricultural and agrochemical equipment manufacturing, food processing, packaging and labeling, warehousing, distribution, regulatory frameworks, funding, marketing, retail, catering, research and development, and education.
The U.S. Economic Research Service. UU. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) uses the term food system to describe this entire company.
We can also see food systems working locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. Production, processing, distribution and consumption: Food systems require many steps, each with a variety of inputs and products. Production can look very different depending on the scale and cultivation methods used. Whether they cultivate a half-acre plot or a 50,000 acre ranch, food producers have to make a lot of decisions about how they will grow food, including whether they will grow a crop or a diverse variety of fruits and vegetables, and whether they should apply organic or synthetic fertilizers.
While some farmers produce resources on the farm, there is an entire industry based on production inputs, including seed companies, plant nurseries, animal feed companies, fertilizer producers, and others. Smallholder farmers often have trouble accessing existing processing facilities, but building new ones is an expensive task. Currently, most meat consumed in the United States is processed in only a few slaughterhouses, but the recent shutdowns of meat-packing plants due to COVID-19 have highlighted the danger of this practice. In the distribution stage, food reaches those who will prepare it for consumption.
There is an almost infinite variety of ways to distribute food, both for free and for a fee. Wholesalers combine products from many producers to sell to schools, hospitals, restaurants and grocery stores. These large-scale buyers often have different requirements than those of those who sell food to the general public, such as liquid eggs for restaurants and boxed milk for schools, and producers can find it difficult to quickly adapt their production systems to meet the different needs of market. An important issue related to distribution is access to food.
Programs like SNAP and WIC are essential social safety net programs that help households buy nutritious and culturally relevant food. SFC is currently leading the statewide expansion of the Double Up Food Bucks program, which doubles the value of SNAP and WIC benefits at many local farmers' markets and other food outlets so that everyone can support their local food economy, regardless of income. While food sold directly from farmers to consumers is a small but growing segment of the market, several other sectors handle the vast majority of food before consumption. Initially, farmers sold many commodities to front-line handlers or to the primary processors who initially added, stored and processed the products before shipping them to wholesalers or to the processing and manufacturing sectors.
Front-line handlers include both for-profit commodity trading companies and farmer cooperatives that aggregate production from individual farms to gain economies of scale and market access to the rest of the food supply chain. Front-line handlers also include companies that wash, wax, wrap and package fruits and vegetables, as well as flour mills, oilseed processors and other companies that prepare raw materials for use in processing and manufacturing finished food products. By-products from this sector are often destined for livestock or used in industrial processes. The food processing and manufacturing industry includes meat packers, bakeries and consumer goods companies that convert raw materials into higher-value processed and packaged food products.
Figure 2-7 also shows the distribution of value added to various factors of production for each subsector of the food supply chain. This consensus-based process, managed by the Food Protection Conference, involves government, academic, industry and consumer delegates and leads to science-based requirements for minimizing biological, chemical and physical hazards in food. Right now, budgets for public research in agriculture and food are shrinking, and in many cases they are replaced by private sector funding for commercial product development (Buttel, 2003b; Pardey et al. Perhaps the most significant change in consumption patterns in the 21st century has been the remarkable growth in demand for food produced or marketed in ways that are perceived to support the health, environmental or social equity objectives of farmers and consumers, such as organic, free-range, fair trade, local And natural.
There are also those companies that, during the food processing process, add vitamins, minerals and other necessary requirements that are usually lost during preparation. For example, a serious problem in many countries is continued food insecurity, which can take the form of chronic hunger, periodic food crises or malnutrition among vulnerable population groups. Consumers are people who buy (and store) food to prepare or eat at home or elsewhere, or who eat at a food service establishment. Similar dramatic changes have occurred throughout the food supply chain, with significant repercussions on the nutrition and health status of the population.
This has facilitated the development of domestic brands and the consolidation between food processors and manufacturers, and has had a similar effect on retail, with the growth and then the consolidation of supermarket chains. Changes in the food processing, marketing, transportation, packaging and retail sectors now have a greater impact on consumer food prices than changes in production practices or variations in yields and agricultural production. Ultra-processed food products are produced by combining primary food products and other secondary food products to create ready-to-eat foods and beverages with high sensory appeal, for example, pastries, candies, jams, soft drinks and ready meals. This process is vital for many precooked foods, as it ensures the availability of a variety of high-quality, nutritious and affordable foods throughout the year in the United Kingdom, Europe and around the world.
Agricultural activities, food processing and marketing practices, nutritional guidance and food consumption behaviors. For much of the 20th century, the quest for greater efficiency in agricultural production led to a steady decline in inflation-adjusted food prices. Price competition among food retailers is one of the reasons why short-term fluctuations in commodity prices are not fully reflected in the retail store, although in the long term, inflationary pressures will affect consumer food prices. .
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