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Download a zip file that includes all the web pages and downloadable files from the student materialsFor the Instructor
These student materials complement the Future of Food Instructor Materials. If you would like your students to have access to the student materials, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing InTeGrate teaching materials.Spatial Scale and Typologies of Food Systems
A good way to understand the complexity of different types of food systems is to look for organizing principles to classify them. In the introductory food supply chain exercise at the beginning of this module, if you chose a product that was produced a long distance from where you consumed it, you are aware that the global food system today handles food at an enormous spatial scale. This example leads to one way to organize our understanding of food systems, which is the hierarchy global, regional, and local scales of food systems (Fig. 10.1.4).
Figure 10.1.4. Spatial scale of organization in food systemsCredit: Steven Vanek
Another helpful way to classify food systems is to look for typologies of food systems. Building typologies is a somewhat subjective but often helpful process where we look for groups of systems or components that hang together in order to better understand their function, importance, or other attributes. For the typology of food systems we present here, we are thinking about classifying food systems based on how production occurs and at what scale, which portions of society are involved in production and distribution, and the rationale underlying production, distribution, and consumption. In this course, we use the scheme of three overlapping food systems that exist at global, regional, and local scales shown below in Fig. 10.1.5.
Figure 10.1.5. Typology of Food Systems into Smallholder, Globalized Corporate, and Alternative types. Two major types at left are the globalized corporate system which is dominant in the industrialized world and in terms of trade of major commodities, and smallholder systems which are in fact extremely important at local and regional levels in the developing world, with more than two billion smallholder farmers globally growing, trading, and selling food in these contexts. The vertical and horizontal axes in the diagram attempt to capture the variation in these systems regarding their integration into global markets and specialized industrial production (vertical axis), and the way in which the systems at right are responses to sustainability challenges of the modern food system (horizontal axis). The alternative types at right, which reflect current trends and movements in the modern food system towards sustainability, are divided into a alternative global or "ecologically modernized" type (see module 2 on the history of food systems) along with a more local or community-based food system type, with both alternative food system types responding to sustainability critiques of the globalized food system in recent history. It is also important to realize that different food systems overlap and are certainly not spatially isolated: for example, smallholders in the developing world simultaneously participate in both smallholder and global ways of producing and consuming food, and urban consumers the world over may simultaneously purchase food from all four systems.Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer
