The Global Food Outlook’s 2009 project, Food Web 2020, took a broad look at the global complexity of the future of food webs with regional variations. Our next research project will examine the shifting futures of acquiring food—from food retail to the contexts of culture and decision making around buying food— in four specific countries to ground regional and global implications. We will conduct on-the-ground research examining the range of response strategies that consumers in China, Brazil, Southern Europe, and the United States are taking to navigate the increasingly complex marketplace and manage their food choices.
This research will form the basis for a series of regional forecast perspectives on the changing landscape of how we acquire food, as well as a synthesis placing these deep regional perspectives in a global context. From this palette of local and global forecasts, we will construct four alternative future scenarios: of constraint, continuation, transformation, and collapse. These divergent future possibilities will show a more robust portrait of the possibilities of these parts of the global food web over the coming decades, to provoke strategic action in the present and will be presented in final visual and written forms at the member conference in September 2011. At that meeting, clients will work hands-on with the scenarios and their implications to apply them to strategic considerations within their sectors and organizations.
Over the next decade, this shifting landscape will open new threats and opportunities for stakeholders in the food web to leverage new forms of food science and creative food production strategies to succeed in this marketplace of abundance and choice.
Project Deliverables
▪ Scenario briefing report & workshop graphic summary (March 2011)
▪ Forecast perspectives and global scenario synthesis (September 2011)
▪ Member Conference (September 27, 2011 at Institute for the Future)
For more information about becoming a member of the Global Food Outlook Program, please contact Dawn Alva, dalva@iftf.org.
