Food Distribution Infrastructure

The Food Distribution Infrastructure is the total system of roads, trucks, grain elevators, supermarkets, grocery stores, distribution warehouses, meatpacking plants, and commerce links that directly execute and accomplish food distribution. This system is diverse, sprawling, and susceptible to interdiction either through naturally occurring or purposeful introduction of disease pathogens.

This is a system of nodes and links that transport, store, and provide foodstuffs available for consumption, connecting assets from hoof to plate and from field to fork. Food distributed within the United States may travel up to 1,500 miles from harvest to table, and often changes a dozen different hands along a food supply chain that links producers, packers, shippers, food manufacturers, wholesale distributors, food retailers, and consumers. These nodes follow two very distinct paths: one for animal foodstuffs, and the other for crop foodstuffs. These two food process paths, although divergent, have points where they intersect. For example, animals are raised and sold at a sale barn, feed lot, or right off the farm. These animals need feed, which is one point of intersection between the animal- and crop-process chains. The animals are then processed and sold to a wholesaler and then to a grocery retailer, which sells both animal and crop foodstuffs to the consumer, creating another point of intersection where the animal and crop food-process chains interact. People involved in production agriculture account for less than two percent of the total U.S. population. This number has lowered over the last 100 years because of increasing efficiency. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of mechanization and other technologies in farming and food processing decreased the amount of labor required in the production, processing, and distribution of food for consumers. Many farms today are large-scale food production facilities, hallmarked by uniformity and efficiency. Foodstuffs are then introduced into the infrastructure and subjected to various forms of sorting, labeling, processing, and packaging.

These farms also present unique challenges for the future. Concentration of food infrastructure facilities such as cattle feed lots poses security issues for the United States. According to research conducted by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 2001, almost 70 percent of the U.S. beef cattle that are finished for slaughter are located in a 200-square-mile area. Three agribusinesses control about 82 percent of the corn exports for the United States. These are just two examples of the concentrated nature of U.S. agriculture and the vulnerabilities contained within this infrastructure.

At the federal level, food and the food infrastructure is regulated and has oversight provided by two different cabinet level positions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture primarily has oversight responsibility for grading, processing, and packaging of meats (poultry, beef, and pork); and the Food and Drug Administration, under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has oversight responsibility for fruits and vegetables. These agencies have responded to outbreaks such as E. coli and Salmonella outbreaks in recent years, as well as the melamine contamination from Chinese [Page 226]foodstuffs during 2008. Optimism about the world's ability to provide enough food for the world food market has been growing. The food distribution infrastructure in developing nations is just as important as the actual food it conveys in providing adequate nutrition to the world's population. In growing population areas such as South America and Asia, food is being exported in larger volumes. However, the world food market may not live up to future expectations without substantial investment in food processing and distribution infrastructure in developing nations, which impacts the types and products of U.S. exports. The United States may begin to transport food technology in the future, rather than traditional foodstuffs.

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