Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food to lead an active and healthy life. It rests on four pillars: availability, access, utilisation and stability. An agri-food system includes every activity involved in feeding people, from farm inputs and production to processing, transport, marketing, retail and consumption. Agribusiness refers to the commercial side of this system, including the companies, cooperatives and markets that connect farmers with consumers, while agricultural economics studies how resources, prices, policies and trade shape farm incomes and food supplies. Smallholder farmers, who produce a large share of the world's food, are central to all of these issues.
What You Will Learn