Modern Food Supply Chain

Modern food supply chain

By Thomas Rottet

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Have you ever thought about how food gets to your home? For example, bananas are a tropical fruit that can only grow in hot, humid climates near the equator. To reach your plate in Pennsylvania, bananas travel thousands of miles from banana plantations.

The video below discusses some of the events that occur while bringing bananas to your grocery store. As you view the video, pay attention to new things you did not know before.

Open Ended

What surprised you the most about how bananas reach your home?

You can start your answer with:

• I was surprised that . . .

​With the help of modern technology, bananas take a long journey to reach your plate. In this lesson, you will learn about how many different types of food travel from the farm to your table. Continue on to learn more about the food supply chain.

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Most foods you eat are different from the crops farmers grow or the livestock they raise. For example, there is no such thing as a bread tree. Instead, wheat grown on farms is ground into flour. Manufacturers combine the flour with other ingredients and bake it into bread. Transforming crops and livestock into the foods that you eat is called food processing. 

​Farmers and food processing factories do not usually sell their products directly to stores. A distributor is a business that receives products from factories and sells those products to stores. Food distributors store food for a period of time and then sell large quantities of the food to stores.

​The infamous "bread tree"

Match

Match the following

• Crops are grown and livestock raised

• Raw ingredients become the products you buy and eat

• Food is stored and prepared for delivery

• Families buy food for the week

• Food is prepared and eaten

Farm

Processing Plant

Distribution plant

Store

Home or restaurant

• Farm

• Processing Plant

• Distribution plant

• Store

• Home or restaurant

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The modern food supply chain delivers food from all over the world. In the same meal, you can enjoy:

• blueberries from Maine;

• bananas from Samoa;

• kiwi from China; and

• pomegranate from India.

People can enjoy a variety of foods that cannot grow where they live.

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You can enjoy your favorite foods any time of the year, even if they are not in season where you live. For example, apples are harvested in August through October in North America. However, apples are ready in February through March in the Southern Hemisphere.

If you live in Pennsylvania and want to eat an apple in April, your grocery store probably carries apples from New Zealand that are crisp and juicy.

​Many modern farms are extremely large businesses. These farms can produce large quantities of one type of food. Producing a lot of one thing is an efficient way to run a business. Large farms can produce a lot of food quickly and easily.