What is Food Systems Research (FSR)?
Food Systems Research (FSR) is the study of the quest for food in the broadest sense, i.e., the study of how food is procured, processed, distributed, stored, prepared, consumed, metabolized and wasted today and in the past. FSR begins with an explicit definition of what is meant by the food system concept: A food system is a dynamic and complex unity consisting of all of the purposive, patterned, and interdependent symbolic and instrumental activities carried out by people in order to procure, process, distribute, store, prepare, consume, metabolize, and waste food (c.f. Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1970; Pimentel 1979; and Goody 1982). FSR uses the concepts of intensification and abatement to describe how food systems change over the long term. These are constructs for thinking about the direction of change, whether toward greater or less intensity, respectively. FSR may involve a fixed-location approach or a fixed-community approach. The former involves studying changes over time i
