Food Policy

Food policy encompasses a diversity of instruments, interventions and documents that impact our food systems, as well as the actors that develop and implement these policies. It includes public policies and policy-making as well as organisational guidelines, procedures or protocols produced by stakeholders outside government, and concerns broad food systems challenges such as climate change and food security. In this entry we focus primarily on public policy: food policies made by governments and their agencies. While historically food policies concerned the capacity of nation states to feed themselves, contemporary food policy involves a diversity of objectives and initiatives across different sectors and government departments, at different administrative levels: local, regional, national, international. Contemporary food policy is also characterised by horizontal and vertical fragmentation and a lack of inclusion and ambition. Addressing these challenges must involve the institutionalisation of systems approaches to policy-making, greater integration of policies made by different parts of government, and confronting inequalities in food policy-making processes.