What the food system will look like in 2100: 3 visions

The three visions have been selected from 10 submissions in response to an open call to come up with creative solutions to problems related to European food systems. The project was initiated by agricultural economist Siemen van Berkum. He explains why it’s important to take a collaborative approach to considering the issue: “Our food systems are not functioning well. We produce a lot, but there are still hungry people in the world.

If we take a close look at the Netherlands, it’s evident that food production comes at the expense of the environment and even of people’s health. We’re familiar with the problems of food-related illnesses such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. And we can see the pressure on farmers’ incomes all over the world. So there’s every reason to consider the design of our future food system. A system able to provide everyone with sufficient healthy food within our planetary boundaries. The trick here is to consider the issue as holistically as possible, so that we don’t solve one problem while causing another.”

The event on 20 November will include the presentation of three visions of the future, designed to bring new momentum to the debate about what the food system in 2100 will look like.

The first contribution will be from Marian Stuiver, programme leader for Green Cities, and Bertram de Rooij, a landscape architect. The vision they’ll be presenting emerged out of workshops held with and for international students and Wageningen academics.

A diverse, healthy and just food future for Europe

The future visions are focused on Europe, and specifically on two European regions with distinctive landscape features: Mediterranean Europe (Europe around the Mediterranean Sea) and Continental Europe (roughly the Eastern and Central European countries). The student groups sketched out what the food system in these two regions should look like in the future. To do this, they used the principle of visioning and backcasting, where you start by imagining the ideal scenario, then reason back to the present, and then think about what you need to do to achieve your vision through those intermediate steps.

“We worked with the students to imagine the principles upon which the ideal food system in the relevant region should be based,” says Marian. “We’re also basing this on what we refer to as biographical regions because our vision is based on soil, water and nature. If you want to develop food systems based more closely on nature, you automatically get more diversity and regionalisation.”

The title, 'A just and regenerative food future for Europe', itself reveals something of Marian and Bertram’s story. Without revealing too much detail now, Marian stresses how important it proved to involve students in formulating a future vision around food: “They’re not yet institutionally entrenched, and they sense the urgency of being disruptive. By way of example, I will be mentioning the concept of ‘socio-ecological justice’ and the criticism that emerged out of the workshops about how global corporations dominate the food system. The participants want to make the system more equitable, with costs and benefits being more justly distributed. I hope we can be inspired by their boldness and sense of urgency. We still too often settle for cautiously phrased statements, using euphemisms like ‘dilemmas’ and ‘challenges’. The system needs some substantial interventions. That’s why we also created a new visual of the system showing clearly the choices that need to be made.”

Digitisation, GPT and AI

In the second contribution of the afternoon, Xuezhen Guo, a research associate in Food Informatics and Supply Chain Management, will present a vision of the role of digitisation and AI in the food systems of the future. Xuezhen and his colleagues (Daoud Urdu, Marcel Kornelis, Nicolo Ferretti, Hannelore Heuer, Conficence Duku and Koos Gardebroek) conducted research into this area and they predict some interesting developments. For example, they expect that farmers of the future won’t need an in-depth knowledge of technology to analyse complex problems.

“By then, farmers will be able to simply speak to a device,” says Xuezhen. “Even if there are errors in what the farmer says, GPT’s capacity will be powerful enough to pick out the essence of the question. Unlike the current GPT model, which is entirely language-based, by then the model will combine language with powerful visualisations. If the farmer asks for insights into a section of his land, he’ll get an answer that includes visuals for easy interpretation.”

Xuezhen and his colleagues also expect the advent of a federated data system to have a substantial impact. This will come at the expense of today’s centralised data systems, managed by the big tech companies. “A federated database system brings together transparently autonomous data systems into a single database,” he explains. “We think the food systems of the future will benefit from this. For example, if we want small-scale farms still to exist in the future, federated systems will have a bigger role to play. Such systems are necessary if we want to encourage data sharing and data use by large groups of players, because each player retains ownership of his own data.

Individual farmers will be able to efficiently improve their performance locally by having direct access to sectoral information. Because systems in the future will be so intelligent and interconnected, they’ll see immediately how to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for example.”

Adios Avocados

The final vision of the food system of the future will be provided by Jan Verschoor, an expertise leader in Post-Harvest Physiology and Post-Harvest Technology at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research. Together with Trond Selnes, René Oostewechel, Xiomara Salas Valderrama and Josianne Cloutier, he will present us with two visions from parallel universes. This will happen in a “format similar to a talk show”, he promises. He, too, doesn’t want to give away too many details, though he does say that the tantalising title 'Adios Avocados' encapsulates the content of both scenarios.

The first scenario took as its starting the point the question of how we might produce food as efficiently as possible in the future. “So you start by asking questions like: what crops will we grow in the future, and on what soils? That means you’d just be trying to get as many carrots, potatoes and onions as possible from an acre of land, so that everyone can have just enough to eat. It would be a kind of dictatorial system where you’d use a QR code to received a daily ration based on your needs. Just like the way we currently feed livestock in our barns.”

The second scenario imagines a future in which the world population has been massively reduced: “Under this vision, humankind realises that it needs to take a different approach. We end up in an AI-driven world where everyone looks out for each other. Products with a large footprint will be taxed in an inclusive way.”

Verschoor assures us that the presentation will be tongue in cheek, and not too serious. “We want to keep it a bit light-hearted. But we do hope that it’ll be thought-provoking for the audience. It’s good to shake things up now and again.”