24 Mar 2015 Seeds of Disruption: How technology is remaking the future of food

In 2013, research group, The Institute for the Future (IFTF) in the US undertook a year-long exploration into the ways that emerging technologies and sciences are reshaping the global food web. It has created Seeds of Disruption: How Technology is Remaking the Future of Food, a forecast map to tell the story of how emerging information technology will reshape every step of the food system.

IFTF explored how several core strategies radically transformed, and continue to shape, our food system, a mong them:

• Production aims for intensification
• Distribution requires efficiency
• Manufacturing is standardised for scalability
• Shopping centralises food in a common marketplace
• And when it comes to eating, convenience and affordability still trump all else

But, says IFTF, it’s not clear that these strategies will work for future generations — they’re encountering limits. Today’s planetary challenges such as widespread food waste and the rise of chronic disease present a call to rethink the food system that cannot be ignored. Across this cycle of human food experiences — production, distribution, manufacturing, shopping, and eating — emerging technologies are poised to take us beyond those limits and transform our food experience.

IFTF has created “Seeds of Disruption: How Technology is Remaking the Future of Food”, a forecast map and set of four perspectives and “Artifacts from the Future”, to tell the story of how emerging information technology will reshape every step of the food system.

The full research package is available for download along with an interactive online map….click here

This forecast map is a tool for starting conversations about how emerging technologies can be used to close important gaps in the food system. It includes forecasts of how technologies will disrupt core strategies our food system has pursued:

• Production | Reorganising intensification: from resource-intensive agriculture to low-impact alternatives
• Distribution | Rebalancing efficiency: from large-scale efficiency models to distributed resilience
• Manufacturing | Remixing standardisation: from standardised to personalised formulation
• Shopping | Rethinking centralisation: from centralised shopping sites to just-in-time delivery
• Eating | Redefining convenience: from on-the-go eating to mindful food experiences

For each of these, the map includes signals—today’s innovations that indicate a direction of future change. For example, small food producers could learn from ColaLife’s strategy to tap into existing distribution infrastructure by literally filling the gaps in shipping containers. Or small, autonomous robots, such as Prospero, could enable cultivation on hard-to-reach surfaces and depopulated rural farms.

At the edges of the map are “strains of uncertainty”, wildcards that are low probability but with the potential for high impact. These are seen in experiments such as Ghost Food that use multisensory technologies to explore future dining experiences in an eating landscape altered by climate change and biodiversity loss.