Six macro trends depicting why future of food will look (very) different
Visions for food, image courtesy: WeVolve.us
Ville Tikka of WeVolve, a “change agency” that currently operates from Helsinki, spoke at the Food Conference in Helsinki on Jan 2012 about New Visions for Food. He pointed out interesting trends to speculate the future of food system, and I transcribed them here.
Climate Change – The changing climate and declining biodiversity will cause vast redistribution of food and water resources worldwide.
Urbanization – Increasing population condensation, growing physical distance between food production and consumption, and emerging urban agriculture solutions are all changing food systems.
Social web – Social web and other digital tools provide better, faster and scalable means for new co-creation, collaboration and participation throughout out the food system
Turbulent economy – As we are likely to move beyond a growth economy, an array of new economic models – ranging from wellbeing economics, sustaining economies, and collaborative exchange systems – will open opportunities for alternative food systems.
Depleting resources – entrenched consumer tastes are severely straining our current food systems. The forthcoming resource scarcities-depleting energy, water, land, etc. Resources are raising concerns about food insecurity and rising cost of food.
Polarization – There is no single food system: the divides between rich & poor, educated & uneducated, and healthy & ill are likely to expand, both locally and globally.
Retrieved on Mar 6, 2012 at Scribd via the post on WeVolve.
This very well underlines the mega-trend that we mankind need to both solve and dance with – we need to realize that this will happen and discover leverage points – a little more advanced version of if-you-can’t-avoid-it-enjoy-it heuristic. I am very much interested in the potential collaboration with WeVolve as Beef Finland evolves. See? Right there, it rhymed.
The full presentation is available for reading and download here.
