Foodshed
The “farm-to-table” movement is focused on producing food locally within a foodshed, and delivering it to local consumers. Direct farm-to-table in the United States tends to comprise only a very minor segment of the food distribution system in terms of size and importance, but is growing in popularity.Nearly 5 percent of all farmers engage in some form of direct food marketing. Estimates of all farm-to-table sales within a foodshed range from roughly $550 million to $2 billion. Many local farms are family-run farms that are successful and do survive through poor economic conditions. Ecologists consider to be more adaptive and more likely to “reproduce” in highly variable and uncertain environments.
Food regimes
Food regime theory is a broadly Marxist approach to theorising food systems. It was developed in the late 1980s by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael. Food regime analysis is concerned with explaining, and therefore politicising, the strategic role of agriculture in the construction and development of the world capitalist economy. As a framework, it takes a historical view in order to identify stable periods of capital accumulation associated with particular configurations of geopolitical power and forms of agricultural production and consumption. Its theoretical roots are in French Regulation Theory and World Systems Theory.