Food industry

The food industry is a diversified collection of companies operating on a worldwide scale that work together to provide the majority of the food that is eaten by the human population. The food business has evolved into a very varied sector, with production ranging from extremely labor-intensive, small-scale, traditional, family-run operations to highly capital-intensive, highly automated, large-scale industrial procedures. A great number of food-related businesses are nearly wholly reliant on the agriculture, animal farms, produce, and/or fisheries of their immediate geographic area.

It is difficult to discover a technique that encompasses all areas of food production and retailing in a manner that is comprehensive. According to the Food Standards Agency of the United Kingdom, this refers to "the whole food sector," which includes "farming and food production," "packing and distribution," "retail and catering," and "all points in between." The same concept is referred to as the food system by the Economic Research Service of the USDA, which defines it as follows: "The U.S. food system is a complex network of farmers and the companies that relate to them." These links contain companies that manufacture agricultural machinery and chemicals, in addition to businesses that offer services to agribusinesses, such as companies that provide transportation and financial services.

Research fields such as food grading, food preservation, food rheology, and food storage directly deal with the quality and maintenance of quality, and their responsibilities overlap with those of many of the processes described above.

It is only possible to exclude hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers from the purview of the contemporary food business. Subsistence farmers are farmers whose primary source of income comes from the crops they raise.

The author Neil Hamilton is credited with coming up with the phrase "Big Food," which is occasionally used to refer to the most successful businesses in the food sector.