The beginning of the story of food is what is termed food production. This might sound logically like the process of making food, such as a chef or food company might, but this term is rather generally used in food science to refer to the so-called primary production of food, from growth of crops to harvesting of fish and minding and milking of cows. Primary production is, for example, what farmers do, producing the food that is brought to the farm-gate, from where the processors take over. So the food chain runs, according to your preference for a snappy soundbite, from grass to glass (for milk), farm to fork, slurry to curry, or (taking the food chain to its logical conclusion, and including the role of the human gut charmingly but appropriately in the chain) from farm to flush. But where do these raw materials that are yielded by primary production actually come from? It is often said that all things found on earth can be divided into categories of animal, vegetable, and mineral. To these could perhaps be added two more categories, microbial and synthetic (man-made). Within these five groups can essentially be placed everything we know as food, so using this classification to consider where our food comes from seems like a good starting point for this book. Perhaps the simplest group to start with is minerals, which might intuitively seem an unlikely source of foodstuffs (do we eat metal or rock?), until we consider where salt comes from and how much of it we add to our food (in other words, probably too much). Our bodies, however, absolutely need for us to consume certain metals and other chemical elements to survive, beyond the sodium and chloride we get from salt, and so many extracted minerals find their way from deposits in the earth into food products. This is particularly important where their biological effects are a desirable outcome (such as in carefully formulated nutritional products). In addition, products such as milk contain minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and more, because the infant or calf needs them to thrive.
The Role of Production Contracts in the Coordination of Agri-Food Chain: Evidence and Future Issues for the Durum Wheat Chain in Italy
