Harvesting Storing |
|
Transporting
|
Changing (Transforming or Processing) Packaging |
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Marketing
| Retailing
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Preparing
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Consuming
Activity 3: Food Thread
Summary
Now that you have identified not only the steps in the food system but various activities within each of those steps, you should cement your understanding by creating a “Food Thread” for one item. This activity will also introduce you to the concept of “local” in the food system.
Materials
• Photocopies of “Getting to the Core” from this lesson
• Writing board and markers
• Paper and pens/pencils
Before Class
Make photocopies as needed.
Class itself
1. Creating your own “Food Thread.” Read the “Getting to the Core” for this lesson, which applies the food system concepts to apples. Choose other food items to trace through the food system. Draw the path this food item would take, or how it would “thread” its way through the food system. This food might be a potato, tomato, strawberry or orange depending on what interests you, or a product native to your location. Or, if you are quite ambitious, choose a food product that contains more than one food from more than one food group – yogurt for example. The important thing is that the food that is chosen should have some meaning and relevance to the food system you are discovering.
2. What does “local“ mean? This term can have many meanings
depending on how it is approached. Refer to the Background section for information about local food systems.
Activity 4: Food for Thought Journal
Summary
As an independent assignment, complete the Food for Thought Journal for Lesson 2.
Materials
• Photocopies of “Food for Thought Journal”
• Pens/pencils
Before Class
Prepare photocopies as needed.
Class itself
In the journal you will be able to study one of your own meals to think about where your food comes from in the context of the steps of the food system.
uestions of the Day:
t you ate today or yesterday.
Did you help prepare the meal?
Was there anything in your meal that you think may have been grown
How would you find out if it were grown or produced locally?
What steps in the food system are represented in what you ate today?
If you could ask someone anything about the foods you ate today, Q
¾ Describe a meal tha
¾
¾
or produced locally before it was in the grocery store or your cabinet?
¾
¾
Which foods were represented by which step?
¾
what would you ask and why?
If time allows, try one of these games:
1. Continue Activity 2 by playing a top ten game. Designate point keepers for the game. Have groups take turns guessing what
activities other groups have listed for their step in the food system by acting out (without words) the particular step or activities. This could lead to a discussion about which steps you think are most expensive, which steps might use a lot of resources, which steps take place within your community. This is a time to have the group brainstorm together now that they are better versed in what the food system is.
Also, you can use the telephone book to find out if there are any food producers or processors in your town.
2. Are you in the food system game?
Before the game: Make a copy of the “Steps in the Food System” list.
Game: At the start of the game give each group a copy of the 10 steps.
Give them about 4 minutes to list people who are members of each step. Have them use specific names, for example: Mr. Williams in the produce department at Greene’s store. Have them list as many names as they can think of next to the step within which the person works.
You might be surprised to find that even you are involved in working within a food system, as a bus-person at a local restaurant or a
cashier at a fast food establishment. At the end of the designated time ask the groups to count all persons listed in each step of the food system. Ask a spokesperson from each group to share their total points and the step with the most and least names recorded in their group. Record the results. This could be an indication as to which steps you are most and least familiar with. Creating a list of family and/or friends who work within the food system would not only be interesting, but also introduce different career possibilities that you have not yet considered. Post the results.
COMMENCEMENT LEVEL CHALLENGE Food for Thought Journal 2
Things to think about:
List the 10 steps within a food system.
1. 6.
2. 7.
3. 8.
4. 9
5. 10.
Which of the steps would occur in a local market?
Which of the steps would occur in a regional market?
Which of the steps would occur in a global market?
Does the number of steps through which a food goes affect the cost of the food?
___yes ___no___maybe
Give some examples of foods grown and marketed locally, regionally and globally.
List the advantages and disadvantages for the consumer choosing foods grown in different areas.
Examples of a locally grown food
advantages disadvantages
Examples of a regionally grown food
advantages disadvantages
Examples of a globally grown food
advantages disadvantages
What is the basis for peoples’ choices when selecting foods?
Background
You probably know more about the food system than you can readily express. If we ask ourselves where a food might come from we will often respond, “the grocery store.” However, most of us do
understand that apples grow on trees somewhere and that farms grow most of our food. It may take time and discussion to define many of the steps in the food system that we are less familiar with or have not
experienced. The primary goal of the lesson is to identify the major steps of the food system and explore some of the activities that take place in each step. Each step is defined and discussed below to help gain a clear idea of how food-producing activities are arranged in the food system.
What is a System?
A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, and oftentimes interdependent elements that function together as a complex, unified whole. One core concept of a system is that a change in one element of a system has an impact, either directly or indirectly, on one or more
additional elements in that system. Another core concept is that systems generally require inputs to function and produce outputs that need to be dealt with one way or another. Inputs and outputs in the food system are too numerous to list here, but every component of the food system uses inputs and results in outputs. For example, the “Growing” segment of the food system requires seeds, soil, water, sunshine, fertilizer/compost, human work, machinery and energy to run the machinery as inputs.
“Growing” generates crops that serve as human foods, and waste that may be incorporated back into the soil or disposed of in another way.
Inputs and outputs vary a great deal depending on the type of food system being considered.
In a true system the components of that system are treated or considered as a whole and cannot be considered in isolation from other related components or elements of the system. Relationships and
interdependencies between the components are key elements of a system.
Systems vary in the degree to which they are "open" or "closed" -- that is, the degree to which system components interact with, or are insulated from, the larger external environment. Given the nature of food systems, which have biological, physical, and socio-economic aspects, there is a high degree of interchange both among the subsystems and with the larger environment. Dynamic adjustments in the food system to external and internal forces, including our research and education
programs, are on going and must be given greater consideration as we conduct our work.
Steps in the Food System:
Food Production involves many of the activities that take place on a farm, at an orchard, in bodies of water, or in greenhouses and fish-farm tanks to produce our food. Food production depends on the "input" of several resources, both natural (soil, water, climate, seeds, and human labor) and human-made (machinery, fuel, fertilizers, pesticides). A farmer owns or rents land to plant crops, or tend animals. The inputs required vary depending on what is being grown or raised and the type of agricultural system that is in place. For example, many of the pesticides and
fertilizers common in most of our agriculture are not allowed in organic agriculture.
Harvest can be very labor-intensive step in the food system if we are talking about many of the fruits and vegetables that are too delicate to be harvested by machine. Other fruits and vegetables are harvested with machines. Mechanical harvesters that require fuel to run harvest most grain and cereal crops. Depending on what is harvested, different
resources may be needed. Some of the inputs required for this step in the system are labor, fuel, raw materials, built equipment, and packing
materials.
Storage refers to keeping a stock or supply of a certain crop to maintain safety and quality for some future use. Storage is required for all crops that are not marketed soon after harvest. Different crops can be stored for different lengths of time. Most fruits and vegetables are highly perishable unless processed or preserved from their fresh form.
Exceptions to this include apples, root vegetables (potatoes, yams, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips), bulbs (onions, shallots, garlic), and cabbages (red and green), all of which store well for extended periods of time, if the proper temperature and humidity are maintained. Grains and cereals store well for years with no energy input. Apples are often kept in controlled atmospheres to make them available many months after they are harvested. Of course, we store food on a daily basis in our refrigerators. The inputs required for storage include energy to maintain the cool environment, gases, packaging, buildings and land.
Distribution is the process of dividing up, spreading out, and delivering food to various places. Farm products can be taken from their original sources and delivered to supermarkets, other food stores, or farmers’
markets for sale as a whole fresh product - like many fruits and vegetables. Alternatively, farm products can be transported to a site where they will be transformed in some way, combined with other ingredients, made into food products, packaged and then distributed through a number to marketing channels. Most of what we find in
grocery stores today has been transported great distances and has undergone some degree of processing. We currently transport food by truck, train, boat, and plane. A few foods (tomatoes and bananas primarily) that will be transported a significant distance are usually harvested before full ripeness so that they will withstand the bumps along the way.
Transformation or Processing changes made to a food's structure, composition, character, or condition, is another way to make food available at times or places that it might otherwise not be. Much of the food we eat on a regular basis is transformed in some way before we eat it. Think of the bread on your sandwich, the juice you had with
breakfast, tomato sauce and the pasta is covers, or the cheese you had on a cracker (and the cracker itself!). During processing, food is changed in some way to enhance flavor, make it last longer than the processed raw foods it came from, or create new products altogether. There are many different ways to process a food. Turning fresh strawberries into jam, making juice from fresh apples, pre-cutting and cooking potatoes for frozen French fries are all ways to process food. It may include drying, cooking, freezing and canning, or adding preservatives to lengthen shelf life. Processing may enhance the nutritional content of a food, and in many cases may decrease nutritional content. Depending on the type of food and processing technique, a variety of inputs are necessary for this step in the food system. Some of them are labor, machinery, water, fuel for cooking and freezing, sugar, and preservatives.
Packaging is a way to protect food from spoilage on its way to our grocery stores. Almost everything we purchase at the grocery store is packaged in some way. Strawberries are put into plastic quart containers, bread is packaged in plastic or paper bags, pasta is kept in cardboard boxes, etc.
Packaging is also a way to divide up the goods in a standard way so that people can purchase a known quantity quickly. It can provide a place for advertisement of the goods contained within. Some of the inputs
necessary to make packaging are paper, plastic, cardboard, aluminum, glass, ink, and machinery.
Marketing, Sales and Purchasing is the process of determining and catering to the consumer’s wants or needs, (or it may give the illusion of need in an effort to get people to buy a product!). A significant portion of the money we spend on each food item goes to marketing teams who determine what people want from the food they eat. Marketers determine how to make food appealing to consumers. The inputs for this step in the system are people’s labor and time, in addition to advertising and packaging.
Retailing is how food is brought to the consumer. Food can be sold to groups of businesses that sell the products in grocery stores or
restaurants. Another way of retailing is bringing goods to a market for consumers to purchase, such as a farmer’s market. Some of the inputs needed for retailing may include transportation to the market, packaging to hold and label goods, and fuel to maintain the food.
Cooking can happen in the home, at restaurants, or in institutional kitchens that feed hundreds of people. If we start with fresh ingredients, cooking “from scratch” can be quite involved and enjoyable. With many food products available today, “cooking” amount to nothing more than re-heating and presenting a dish or entire meal on a plate. When we purchase food from a restaurant, someone else does the cooking. The inputs needed for cooking depend on what is being done with the food.
Some inputs may be water, heat, and various appliances, as well as our time.
Consuming is the step of the system when we purchase or eat food.
People studying the food system may consider the purchasing of food to be consumption because that is when it is taken out of, or “disappears”
from, the retail sector of the food system. A family might consider consumption to be when they eat food because that is the time when a meal is enjoyed together. The primary input for this step is financial, since we pay for the food item and all of the activities required in bringing the food to our table.
Disposing, composting and recycling -- Some food that is purchased, cooked and served as part of a meal is not eaten and instead is thrown out. This food can go into the garbage or can be added to a compost pile and turned into a valuable, rich fertilizing material to add to a home garden or a farmer’s field. Food packages may also have different fates with different environmental impacts. All food packages, of course, can be thrown away and added to the solid waste accumulated by a
community. However, many food packages can be recycled. Food packing materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, aluminum, glass and tin can be recycled depending on the services provided by the community.
Models of the Food System
Since we cannot “see” the whole food system at one time, models have been developed to help us understand this complex and
interdependent system.
The food system has been conceptualized [and modeled] in several different ways (Sobal et al, 1998). Models may be linear in nature -- starting with production and proceeding to transportation, processing,
marketing, and consumption. However, the food system is undoubtedly more complex than it might appear from a linear model. Each component or subsystem depends upon inputs both natural and man-made, and produces by-products that are either recycled or end up as waste that is absorbed by the larger environment. In addition there are feedback loops by which one component or subsystem affects another.
A model developed for the Northeast Network for Food, Farm and Health Policy Education places this linear model in the biophysical, socio-cultural, and economic-political spheres, which greatly influence the food system and are, in turn, influenced by it.
Figure 1:
Sobal, et al. (1998) have also placed a linear schematic of production, consumption, and nutrition in a broader context of biophysical and social realms.
There are other ways to think about the food system, including food webs and food circles or cycles, which are departures from the linear approach. They can more clearly reflect the complexity of the interaction among the system components and may convey the sense of a closed system. The model developed as part of an elementary school curriculum -- The Whole Story of Food -- is an example of a circular
portrayal of the food system. But, as the model shows, the food system is not closed as depicted by the "disposing" step directed away from the cycle. In addition, the uni-directional flow clockwise around the cycle,
misses the impacts any step might have on the one preceding it. Further, in actuality each of the steps in this circular model is dependent on inputs (most obviously energy) from outside the system. Likewise, each step results in outputs that are at least in part absorbed beyond the bounds of the system. It is worth noting that although closed systems may be an ideal for which to strive, they are rarely seen in the real world because any defined system could also be redefined as part of a larger system with which it inherently interacts.
Figure 2:
For Discovering the Food System we have taken elements of several food system models and created a new one. This model emphasizes the interdependencies of each of the components and the inputs necessary and outputs that result from each step.
These steps of the food system are presented in a typical order.
Sometimes the steps may occur in a different order depending on what food product is being produced in the system. Most likely you can bring up steps that might happen out of this order. For example, often food is stored at home in a refrigerator after it has been purchased from the retail store. Also, some people will purchase fruits to process and
package at home by making jam. Adding to this arrangement of steps in the food system by exploring different foods will help you understand the parts of the system more deeply.
Figure 3:
About the lesson…
About the lesson…