What is Food Systems Research (FSR)?

Food Systems Research (FSR) is the study of the quest for food in the broadest sense, i.e., the study of how food is procured, processed, distributed, stored, prepared, consumed, metabolized and wasted today and in the past.

FSR begins with an explicit definition of what is meant by the food system concept: A food system is a dynamic and complex unity consisting of all of the purposive, patterned, and interdependent symbolic and instrumental activities carried out by people in order to procure, process, distribute, store, prepare, consume, metabolize, and waste food (c.f. Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1970; Pimentel 1979; and Goody 1982).

FSR uses the concepts of intensification and abatement to describe how food systems change over the long term.  These are constructs for thinking about the direction of change, whether toward greater or less intensity, respectively.

FSR may involve a fixed-location approach or a fixed-community approach.  The former involves studying changes over time in the food system within a given geographical region. The latter involves studying changes over time in the food system of a particular community.

FSR involves three fundamental tasks: First, deliniation of patterned activities related to the quest for food.  Second, grasping how these activities are interdependent, creating a complex whole; and third, accounting for the origin, persistence and change of the food system.

FSR studies why food systems intensify, examining factors such as innovation, population growth, new opportunities, centralization, craft specialization, state formation and bureaucratization. 

FSR studies why food systems abate, due to factors such as accumulating hazards, lost opportunities, short-sighted policies, wars, epidemics, and underdevelopment. 

FSR is concerned with the temporal characteristics of food systems over the long term, including such characteristics as stability, resilience and cyclicity.

FSR is concerned with applying knowledge gained from the past to improve the future.

FSR has intellectual roots in a wide variety of theoretical orientations including cultural ecology, ecosystems research, energetics research, farming systems research, nutritional anthropology, and proccessual archaeology.

Food Systems Research: A Case Study from Madaba Plains, Jordan

The Madaba Plains Project is an example of a fixed location approach.  It focuses on the geographical region in the Jordan known as the Madaba Plains or the Madaba Plateau. 

The first phase of the Madaba Plains Project (1968-1983) involved multi-disciplinary investigations of a site called Tell Hesban and its hinterland within a 10 km radius.  The second phase (1984-1991) centered on Tell el-Umeriri and its 5 km hinterland. 

The temporal range of these investigations is approximately six millenia, from the Early Bronze Age to the present. 

Investigations have been carried out by a muli-disciplinary team of scholars including archaeologists, architects, artists, ecologists, hydrologists, epigraphers, ethnoarchaeologists, geographers, medieval and ancient historians, lithicists, paleobotanists, zooarchaeologists, and other experts.

The effort to reconstruct and account for long-term changes in intensity of the Madaba Plain food system brought a common focus to the research, reconstructing how successive generations of inhabitants have procured, processed, distributed, stored, prepared, consumed, metabolized, and wasted food in the Madaba Plains region.

Investigations of these processes begain with Step One: an attempt to delineate patterned activities related to the quest for food in the project area during the recent past (ca. A.D. 1800-1980).  This was followed by Step Two: an attempt to grasp how these activities were interrelated.  The result of this effort was three hypothesized configurations of activities as shown below.

A low intensity configuration is charcterized by:

  • high diversity of naturally occuring plant and animal species;
  • high seasonal variation in location and intensity of human population due to migration;
  • prevalence of pastoral pursuits and minimal disturbance of soils due to cultivation;
  • prevalence of portable or seasonally abandoned operational facilities; and
  • prevalence of a subsistence diet derived from animal by-products, fruits and grains in season, hunting, and gathering.

A medium intensity configuration is characterized by:

  • moderate diversity of naturally occuring plant and animal species;
  • moderate seasonal variation in location and intensity of human population due to an increased number of permantly settled households;
  • prevalence of field crop pursuits and a moderated disturbance of soils due to cultivation, especially in fertile plains and valleys;
  • prevalence of small-scale water and soil management technologies, fortified farmsteads, villages, and extensive utilization of cattle for plowing; and
  • prevalence of a subsistence diet derived primarily from field crops, but supplemented by produce resulting from limited gardening or orcharding, and flocks of sheep, goats, and poultry.

A high intensity configuration is characterized by:

  • low diversity of naturally occuring plant and animal species;
  • minimal seasonal variation in locatoin and intensity of human populatoin due to large numbers of permanently settled households;
  • prevalence of field crop pursuits in combination with extensive gardening and orcharding, the latter being especially important in hilly terrain;
  • prevalence of large-scale water and soil management technologies, food processing and storage installations, transportation facilities, markets and urban centers, and extensive utilization of mules and horses for plowing; and
  • prevalence, especially in urban areas and to a lesser degree in rural areas, of a diet consisting of greater variety and quantity of exotic items, fruits, and vegetables due to delocalization of food supply by means of long-distance trade.

These hypotheses facilitated the task of reconstructing from archaeological remains patterned activities related to the quest for food.  To this end, ten different lines of information were analyzed, as shown below:

Ten lines of information:

  • Archaeological Stratum Descriptions
  • Pottery Readings
  • Registered Small Finds
  • Animal Bones
  • Carbonized Seeds
  • Archaeological Survey Findings
  • Ecological Survey Findings
  • Ethnoarchaeological Findings
  • Explorers' Accounts
  • Secondary Sources

Closely linked to the processes of intensification and abatement of food systems in Jordan are the processes of sedentarization and nomadization.  The former involves the gradual conversion of households to settled ways; the latter involves households gradually changing to more nomadic ways.  Such movement is reflected by the numbers of households living in tents, caves, or permantent houses.

The Third Step in FSR, namely accounting for changes in the intensity of the local food system at different points in time, will provide the Madaba Plains Project with its future research agenda.  An initial attempt is offered in the book, Sedentarization and Nomadization (1990). http://www.andrews.edu/universitypress/catalog.cgi?key=88

Edited 4/12/05 tlc