What do you have in common with every other human being on this earth?

For one thing, we all need to eat. No matter where we live or work, everyone who eats is connected to (and has a vested interest in) the whole food system - even though much of that system is invisible most of the time. As you fill your grocery cart, do you think about:

• Who grows and harvests the raw food products? Who transports it? Who processes it?
• What are the benefits from each link in the food chain? Who receives those benefits?
• What are the costs associated with producing this food? How are those costs distributed? Who pays?

Food is complex. The system behind the food that we eat includes production, processing and transportation, which are in turn linked to every social, economic and environmental process you can imagine. If we want a secure supply of good healthy food to eat, we need to know how the food system works.

When you buy a basket of strawberries at your local grocery store, you know that it has passed through many hands along its way. Landowner to field worker to fruit buyer, CEO to wholesale distributor, from truck driver to factory worker and grocery clerk. A complex set of relationships is involved in growing, processing and distributing raw food and its derivative products.

All aspects of the food system are important, especially those we seldom see or think about. As consumers of food, we prefer (and some would argue, need) to know what's in our food: what its nutritional status is, and that it is free of chemicals and dangerous microbes.

If we are truly concerned that our food system produces 'safe' food, we must also know about who produces and processes our food. Do they earn a fair wage that allows them to eat healthy food and have fresh, clean water? Do1they grow food in ways that harm the soil, the air and water, or birds, animals and people?

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