Food industry

The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, family-run activities that are highly labour-intensive, to large, capital-intensive and highly mechanized industrial processes. Many food industries depend almost entirely on local agriculture, animal farms, produce, and/or fishing.

It is challenging to find an inclusive way to cover all aspects of food production and sale. The UK Food Standards Agency describes it as "the whole food industry – from farming and food production, packaging and distribution, to retail and catering". The Economic Research Service of the USDA uses the term food system to describe the same thing, stating: "The U.S. food system is a complex network of farmers and the industries that link to them. Those links include makers of farm equipment and chemicals as well as firms that provide services to agribusinesses, such as providers of transportation and financial services. The system also includes the food marketing industries that link farms to consumers, and which include food and fiber processors, wholesalers, retailers, and foodservice establishments." The food industry includes:

Areas of research such as food grading, food preservation, food rheology, food storage directly deal with the quality and maintenance of quality overlapping many of the above processes.

Only subsistence farmers, those who survive on what they grow, and hunter-gatherers can be considered outside the scope of the modern food industry.

The dominant companies in the food industry have sometimes been referred to as Big Food, a term coined by the writer Neil Hamilton.

Most food produced for the food industry comes from commodity crops using conventional agricultural practices. Agriculture is the process of producing food, feeding products, fiber and other desired products by the cultivation of certain plants and the raising of domesticated animals (livestock). On average, 83% of the food consumed by humans is produced using terrestrial agriculture. In addition to terrestrial agriculture, aquaculture and fishing play vital roles in global food production. Aquaculture involves the cultivation of aquatic organisms such as fish, shrimp, and mollusks in controlled environments like ponds, tanks, or cages. It contributes significantly to the world's seafood supply and provides an important source of protein for human consumption. Fishing, on the other hand, relies on harvesting wild aquatic species from oceans, rivers, and lakes, further diversifying the sources of food for human populations and supporting livelihoods in coastal communities worldwide. Together, terrestrial agriculture, aquaculture, and fishing collectively ensure a diverse and ample supply of food to meet the dietary needs of people across the globe.

Scientists, inventors, and others devoted to improving farming methods and implements are also said to be engaged in agriculture. One in three people worldwide are employed in agriculture, yet it only contributes 3% to global GDP. In 2017, on average, agriculture contributes 4% of national GDPs. Global agricultural production is responsible for between 14 and 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the largest contributors to global warming, in large part due to conventional agricultural practices, including nitrogen fertilizers and poor land management.

Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fibre, and land reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences. Agronomists today are involved with many issues including producing food, creating healthier food, managing the environmental impact of agriculture, and extracting energy from plants.