page_title: Food industry
section_title: Food industry technologies
hierarchical_section_title: Food industry / Food industry technologies
caption_attribution_description: English: The Passaic Agricultural Chemical Works. Lister Brothers, Proprietors, Newark, N.J. (1876)
context_page_description: The food industry is a complex, global collective of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The term food industries covers a series of industrial activities directed at the processing, conversion, preparation, preservation and packaging of foodstuffs. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, family-run activities that are highly labor intensive, to large, capital-intensive and highly mechanized industrial processes. Many food industries depend almost entirely on local agriculture or fishing.
  It is challenging to find an inclusive way to cover all aspects of food production and sale. The UK Food Standards Agency describes it thus:
  "...the whole food industry – from farming and food production, packaging and distribution, to retail and catering."
  The Economic Research Service of the USDA uses the term food system to describe the same thing:
  "The U.S. food system is a complex network of farmers and the industries that link to them.
context_section_description: Modern food production is defined by sophisticated technologies. These include many areas. Agricultural machinery, originally led by the tractor, has practically eliminated human labor in many areas of production. Biotechnology is driving much change, in areas as diverse as agrochemicals, plant breeding and food processing. Many other types of technology are also involved, to the point where it is hard to find an area that does not have a direct impact on the food industry. As in other fields, computer technology is also a central force, with computer networks and specialized software providing the support infrastructure to allow global movement of the myriad components involved.
caption: The Passaic Agricultural Chemical Works, an agrochemical company, in Newark, New Jersey, 1876
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