What is a food supply chain?
A supply chain is a series of connected practices that move a good from where it is grown/produced to where it is consumed and increasingly after it has been consumed.
A food supply chain is made up of relationships between the different people and organisations who are connected through the growing, producing, moving, packaging, processing, cooking, selling and consuming. Examples of such people and organisations include farmers, pickers, manufacturers, transporters, restaurants and supermarkets etc.
Supply chains can be as simple as growers selling to consumers, or much more complex, including everything from farming, to transportation, distribution, packaging, delivery, selling and consumption.
An example of this might be a farmer milking cows and storing milk, to transporting the milk to a facility where it is bottled, to transporting the bottles to a supermarket, where the milk becomes available for a consumer to buy. Each step in the chain involves multiple people and livelihoods.
These relationships are not necessarily close, direct or long-lasting. They can span multiple countries across the world or be quite local. The supply chain can be short (two actors) or long (multiple actors).
