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Thought for Food

Athena @ ST 11 July 2019


The world's population is expected to rise to 9.8 billion by 2050, requiring a 70% increase in food production that will need to be achieved with a limited number of hectares of arable land and in a context of accelerated land and soil degradation.
What is changing?

Read on to discover what our robot, Athena, has found on the future of Food and act accordingly, or click any link to read the evidence she found in 5,243 reports, articles and PowerPoints from the Web and Social Media in a few seconds.

If you are new to foresight, we recommend you view this slide presentation first to get the best out of this report.

Quick Summary

The summary visuals below are completely machine produced, showing our robot's global analysis of:

Driving Forces



What is changing?

Causes

Who and what are causing these changes:

Potential solutions

What are others doing to seize opportunities or minimise risks?

You can learn more, click through to more detail on 'thoughts for food' and run collaborative, digital  workshops on these findings. Please contact us if you need assistance.

More analysis
The more detailed analysis below draws from our robot's visualizations on 'thoughts for food' from different vantage points to tell the story of what's emerging; just like a GPS system.

Cloud: The world's population is expected to rise to 9.8 billion by 2050, requiring a 70 percent increase in food production that will need to be achieved with a limited number of hectares of arable land and in a context of accelerated land and soil degradation. Plus, the impact of climate change, forced migration of both humans and animals  and territorial conflict over water and food supplies will considerably worsen the situation and increase sickness, malnutrition and deaths.

Systems map: The systems map indicates the growing concern for food supply in Europe, North America, and Asia. But. it notably does not show much interest in the burgeoning growth of African populations and the resultant need for continent-wide food supply. Unless something is done soon to address this, we can expect many more hunger led disasters in Africa being reported on devices.

Radar chart: The key ideas to solve upcoming food crises involve creating better protection, intelligence and sensing mechanisms and increased manufacturing efficiency. But, will this be enough? Or, will the food industry and governments' have to turn to cultured meat, biotech solutions and new logistical solutions such as drones to deliver just-in-time supply.

Graph-It: By 2025, we can expect to see far greater online education in food preparation and waste handling for both animal and human consumption alike that medicate as well as feed populations.

Spline chart: In the past three years the two presented Trend Wave charts show there has been a significant raising of awareness about the need to feed the world's rapidly growing population and the potential for income growth. This is currently forecast to peak between 2028 and 2032 but the number of variables involved in food supply and demand may significantly change a future Trend Wave' shape and peak. We recommend the creation of scenarios with such uncertainty. Do contact us for help in constructing your scenarios and responding to the findings in just a few hours.

Sentiment: Overall sentiment is considerably positive with most pundits and the public recognizing that food supply and demand is being increasingly met in many more countries of the world. But the negative sentiments come from those seeing the elephant in the room that means insufficient food in the future for many millions of people around the globe.

Pie Charts: Achieving sufficiency of global food supply is likely to take the rest of this century but it's a prize worth having in terms of the billions and trillions of dollars that experts attach to delivering nutrition worldwide.

However, most initiatives are still at early stage (59%) with almost all the remainder still evolving or gaining traction. Much more needs to be done for the public to believe that food insecurity has been eliminated by the likely tipping point of 2034.

Heat map: The Heat Map shows the current weak efforts of most countries to fix emerging food issues with the USA and UK leading the charge. But there is very little focus on achieving food sustainability from the environment, food and agriculture, science and government sectors.  

Emergent Drivers: These weak signals are reflected in the Emergent Drivers chart which shows Food and Agriculture with only medium attention behind Retail, Manufacturing, Pharma, Software, Energy and Real Estate.

SWOT: Given the above it is not surprising that opportunities for improvement considerably outweigh the treats associated with delivering food stability.

Visuals
For more detailed explanation of the graphics below please click here. All outlooks based on 2025 unless otherwise stated.

Cloud
The world's population is expected to rise to 9.8 billion by 2050, requiring a 70 percent increase in food production that will need to be achieved with a limited number of hectares of arable land and in a context of accelerated land and soil degradation. Plus, the impact of climate change, forced migration of both humans and animals  and territorial conflict over water and food supplies will considerably worsen the situation and increase sickness, malnutrition and deaths.

System map
The systems map indicates the growing concern for food supply in Europe, North America, and Asia. But. it notably does not show much interest in the burgeoning growth of African populations and the resultant need for continent-wide food supply. Unless something is done soon to address this, we can expect many more hunger led disasters in Africa being reported on devices.



Radar chart



The key ideas to solve upcoming food crises involve creating better protection, intelligence and sensing mechanisms and increased manufacturing efficiency. But, will this be enough? Or, will the food industry and governments' have to turn to cultured meat, biotech solutions and new logistical solutions such as drones to deliver just-in-time supply.

Graph-It
By 2025, we can expect to see far greater online education in food preparation and waste handling for both animal and human consumption alike that medicate as well as feed populations.

Spline
In the past three years the two presented Trend Wave charts show there has been a significant raising of awareness about the need to feed the world's rapidly growing population and the potential for income growth. This is currently forecast to peak between 2028 and 2032 but the number of variables involved in food supply and demand may significantly change a future Trend Wave' shape and peak. We recommend the creation of scenarios with such uncertainty. Do contact us for help in constructing your scenarios and responding to the findings in just a few hours.

Trend Wave - Today


Trend Wave – 4 years ago

Sentiment


Overall sentiment is considerably positive with most pundits and the public recognizing that food supply and demand is being increasingly met in many more countries of the world. But the negative sentiments come from those seeing the elephant in the room that means insufficient food in the future for many millions of people around the globe.

Pie Charts


Achieving sufficiency of global food supply is likely to take the rest of this century but it's a prize worth having in terms of the billions and trillions of dollars that experts attach to delivering nutrition worldwide.

However, most initiatives are still at early stage (59%) with almost all the remainder still evolving or gaining traction. Much more needs to be done for the public to believe that food insecurity has been eliminated by the likely tipping point of 2034.

Heat map

The Heat Map shows the current weak efforts of most countries to fix emerging food issues with the USA and UK leading the charge. But there is very little focus on achieving food sustainability from the environment, food and agriculture, science and government sectors.  

Emergent drivers

 

These weak signals are reflected in the Emergent Drivers chart which shows Food and Agriculture with only medium attention behind Retail, Manufacturing, Pharma, Software, Energy and Real Estate.

SWOT


Given the above it is not surprising that opportunities for improvement considerably outweigh the treats associated with delivering food stability.

 Questions

Evidence

Search term: food: Use this search term to explore our database for more knowledge and wisdom and latest data and information on the topic.

Implications

market

industry

demand

production

population

unsustainable development goal

waste

security

food

growth

Potential Responses

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Sources
Athena used the sources as the top ones to create this report and determined which embedded forecasts are included in this Trend Alert. She found 5,243 forecasts in seconds on 11th July 2019 to allow us to publish this report in less than two hours. She can turn these into PowerPoint slides and Audio files in thirty minutes too as you wish, or we can prepare a full customized and professionally written brief for you to order covering all these forecasts.

Athena
Athena does show duplicates to aid your understanding of themes as well as contradictory forecasts. She may also show near-duplicates. You can speed read past the duplicates and near duplicates if you wish, though the latter may show additional information. You can use the contradictory, and likely uncertain forecasts she finds to imagine different scenarios. The future is unpredictable, but we can examine the possibilities and choose our preferable future from the choices she presents. 

Athena is apolitical. She will report forecasts from different viewpoints however distasteful that might be to our own values. Wearing rose-colored glasses is not her purpose; reporting potential futures is. So, we recommend you check her veracity before responding to her extracted forecasts.
Just like humans, Athena can be fallible. Do recognize that you and your associates are biased too. But whereas you tire, make mistakes and only recognize what interests you, she does not. She might miss or misinterpret as you do, but with far less frequency and she'll take uncomfortable truths and alternative ideas in her stride. But, please let us know if you feel her bias can be reduced. We want to do our best for you. And, as with any research, you should check and triangulate her findings for yourself.

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