A system that delivers food from the farm to our tables. This can include credit for the farmer, fertilizer, seeds, and animals, and the complex system from producer to supermarket: ‘interdependent sets of enterprises, institutions, activities, and relationships which collectively develop and deliver material inputs to the farming sector, produce primary commodities, and subsequently handle, process, transport, market, and distribute food and other agro-based products to consumers’ (World Bank, Africa Reg. Working Paper Series 44 2003). For a developing country, agro-food systems might account for 50% or more of national GDP, and Grimes, in Wharf (ed.) 2006, refers to ‘the increasingly long and complicated path that food takes to get to our table’. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada describes the Canadian agro-food system as ‘modern, highly complex, integrated, internationally competitive’, and is full of information. In contrast agro-food and agribusiness account for only 20% of GDP for Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank paper on agro-food systems in Africa is comprehensive, clear, and recommended.
http:/www.agr.gc.ca Website of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.