Local food is food that is produced within a short distance of where it is consumed, often accompanied by a social structure and supply chain different from the large-scale supermarket system.
The Marylebone farmers' market in London, United Kingdom
A cheesemaking workshop with goats at Maker Faire 2011. The sign declares, "Eat your Zipcode!"
The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps. Food systems fall within agri-food systems, which encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities in the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as in food storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal, and consumption. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, technological and environmental contexts. It also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education. Food systems are either conventional or alternative according to their model of food lifespan from origin to plate. Food systems are dependent on a multitude of ecosystem services. For example, natural pest regulations, microorganisms providing nitrogen-fixation, and pollinators.
A greenhouse with salad of a cooperative
An organic food box of an organic food delivery service
A farmers' market offering food produced by community-supported agriculture that is also delivering online orders
The heavy industrialization of USA, Europe and China is responsible for 90% of the world's pollution.