Systems Thinking
This way of understanding the world asks us to look beyond individual problems and instead see how everything is connected in the food system.
What is systems thinking?
This way of understanding the world asks us to look beyond individual problems and instead see how everything is connected in the food system.
What is a paradigm (or worldview) shift?
Industrial farming often relies heavily on three inputs: fertilizer, pesticides, and this.
What is irrigation water?
Systems thinkers avoid blaming individuals for eating habits. Instead, they focus on this larger set of influences — including access, culture, and marketing.
What is the food environment?
Food Assistance program used by 42 million Americans
What is SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Program)?
This type of diagram visualizes cause-and-effect relationships across food production, access, and consumption — helping identify where interventions can have the biggest impact.
What is a causal loop diagram?
This kind of feedback loop can stabilize a system — like portion limits helping balance how much students take and eat.
What is a balancing feedback loop?
Post-harvest losses — like crops spoiling before they reach markets — are especially high in this continent due to limited cold storage and transportation.
What is Africa? (Must give credit for Asia too!)
In human-centered design, the first step — talking to students, families, and farmers — is called this.
What is empathy?
This everyday choice — what people buy for dinner — is shaped more by access than by personal preference.
What is consumption behavior?
When food access improves nutrition, which boosts community productivity and economic stability — reinforcing the positive trend — this type of feedback loop is at work.
What is a reinforcing feedback loop?
Updating menus, adding salad bars, or changing cafeteria flow affects this leverage point related to material movement in the food system.
What are information or material flows?
Farming that works with nature — using compost, crop rotation, and reduced tillage — is known as this type of agriculture.
What is regenerative agriculture?
This systems thinking tool helps us identify where a small change can lead to a big impact — useful when tackling food waste or access issues.
What are leverage points?
When schools source local produce, students gain easier access to fresh food — showing the power of this Farm to School strategy.
What is local procurement?
According to Donella Meadows, this is the strongest leverage point — the mindset or underlying belief system that shapes a food system’s goals and rules.
What is a paradigm (or worldview)?
When a school shifts its main goal from “filling trays” to “nourishing students,” it is changing this high-impact leverage point.
What are the goals of the system?
In many countries, women produce much of the food, yet cannot legally own land or access the same agricultural training and tools as men. This reflects a barrier rooted in this powerful systems leverage point.
What are cultural paradigms (or gender-based norms)?
Human-centered design invites users to help generate ideas in this step — the opposite of experts designing solutions alone.
What is ideation?
Food justice movements argue that access to healthy food should be treated as this — not a privilege.
What is a human right?
When a community meal distribution program shifts food waste from landfills to compost, it highlights how waste is not the end, but part of this cyclical model of systems thinking.
What is a circular system? (or “What is a closed-loop system?”)
Changing taxes, prices, and portion sizes are examples of this lowest-level leverage point that tweaks small details of a system.
What are parameters?
In regions where farmers save and share seeds each season instead of buying new ones, this practice protects biodiversity and reduces dependence on large seed companies.
What is seed sovereignty? (or seed saving)
When a system improves for one group but harms another — like cheap food that hurts farmers — this unintended outcome is called this.
What is a trade-off?
Food access is not just about personal choices — it is influenced by zoning laws, transportation systems, and grocery store placement. These “rules of the game” represent which systems leverage point?
What are the rules of the system?