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Food Policy
The Food System :: Just and Sustainable :: Sustainability
The Food System - Greater than the Sum of its Parts
The Food System is, like the name suggests, an interconnected network of practices, processes and places that cover all aspects of food. This page provides a quick overview of the six components of the food system. The City’s Food Policy team and Food Policy Council is working in all of these areas.
Food Production
Refers to the farming and gardening practices that produce the raw food products - fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products that form the basis of our diet. Sources of food production can include local, national and international farming, and, closer to home, urban agricultural initiatives such as community gardens, green roofs and school yard food plots. |
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Food Processing
Processing food means transforming it from its raw state into something that is eaten. This can be as simple as peeling a carrot, or as complicated as making a fine pastry. It can also include things like canning and preserving food or extracting and refining constituent parts from one raw food product for use elsewhere - e.g. the way sugar is processed from cane or tofu from soya. |
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Food Distribution
Food moves from seed to farm, from field to market and from market to table. Different distribution channels and venues come into play at every step of the way. These might include things like Community Support Agriculture (CSA) programs, good food boxes and delivery services and on-line shops and services. |
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Food Access
In general, food access refers to people’s ability to obtain healthy and nutritious food via grocery stores and markets. As part of the policy process, Food Access also refers to specific programs that are designed to ensure that all residents of a community can eat well. This includes things like emergency food programs, meal programs, food banks and buying clubs. |
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Food Consumption
People - even “different” folks like Christopher Walken - need to eat. For most people, the “consumption” part of the Food System is the most enjoyable. It covers things a range of activities - including some of the most connecting of social behaviours everything from sharing a snack, eating and drinking, dining out, and participating in cultural food celebrations. |
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Waste Management
Covers the ways and means that the City and its citizens deal with the material remains of food - the waste and compostables, packaging, effluents and pollution that are produced by the various components of the food system. Far from being the “last” stage of the food cycle, good waste manangement actually lays the groundwork for more and better food. Compost that! |
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