16 NOVEMBER 2017 With an estimated 9.6 billion people by 2050, an entire new food system will emerge. Technology will be a staple component of the future. Evolving methods that are currently being seen to disrupt the market will transform to become the status quo and challenge traditional approaches, in a sustainable and proficient way. Success in the industry will be multi-faceted. Demanding a long term lens on how the agrifood industry operates will ultimately drive the development of standards ensuring continuity of efficiency industry practices. These newly formed standards will not be at the detriment of the environment, but quite the opposite. There will be a clear focus on sustainability not only in terms of future-proofing the impact that creating products has on the environment, soils, water and biodiversity, but also ensuring people involved are respected and developed appropriately. Businesses will be conducted in line with the expectations of the community. The way in which we farm will be proficient and precise. As technology is adopted and is embedded as mainstream, prices for technology will drop. Hi-tech advancements on-farm will drift right through the entire value chain, saturating the agri-food industry at every touch point. The ability to link every single form of technology will revolutionise how we operate. Precision agriculture will be standard and accordingly, productivity will be optimal. The environment will not only be unaffected, it will be nurtured and waste will be nil. All co-products and by-products will be utilised and repurposed, and create multiple income streams for those involved. This hi-tech era will be automated, taking over the farmer’s intuition. The integration of digital technology into all aspects of farming systems will be indispensable. Big data will subsequently provide everything required for producers to be successful. The collection of data and use of algorithms will assist in enhancing the farmer’s intuition, enabling better choices, improving yields while decreasing resource use. The data collected will also form a step in the blockchain of data ultimately proving the provenance of the product. Being able to trace the product back to its origin will not be a ‘nice to have’, it will be a firm requirement by law. Processes will be centralised and a new streamlined value chain will appear. The middlemen will no longer exist. Products will flow directly to consumer through online digital channels. This will address cost efficiency, health and safety issues, and decrease resources needed (such as taking trucks off the road, delivering from farm to distributor then to the consumer). This will also eliminate commission agents charging a cut or commission fee from the agriculturists/farmers coming to the offered a range of wines to suit your personality and mood. The Girlfriends range included ‘Party Girl’, ‘Wild Girl’ and ‘Good Girl’. Each wine carried a description, so for example ‘Classy Girl’ was a ‘stylish Chardonnay with hints of vanilla that transitions seamlessly from daytime to night-time for pleasure-seeking consumers’. Mass Authenticity Authentic recipes, tastes and product heritage remain an attractive proposition for consumers; meanwhile, the (stated) desire to avoid the mass-produced, the artificial and the generic in food and drink is strong. In the restaurant industry, we are seeing restaurants serving produce grown or produced on site - from patio vegetable patches to rooftop beehives. California-based fast causal chain Tender Greens has been explicit in its partnership with local food producers since its start in 2014. Most recently, many of its Southern California restaurants benefit from salads grown on-site through the use of hydroponic towers on restaurant patios. The towers also use 85-90% less water than ordinarily would have been used, thus helping to alleviate. Culture of Immediacy The ever-present demand for offers which save time and provide immediate satisfaction - with no compromise on quality. Single-serve, grab-and-go snacks, part-scratch cooking options… all will appeal to the convenience-hungry consumer. From a food service perspective, companies such as Sticky are using visual engagement analytics platforms that emotionally track to its eye-tracking services. When interfaced with facial recognition software on concepts like Google glass, they allow the food server to understand the emotions of the consumer…are they really feeling indulgent or did they really like the food? The potential is to link emotions with big data and for food servers to suggest personalised food options. Dr Ian Yeoman is a futurologist resident at the School of Management, Victoria University of Wellington. Foodie future As the world’s population grows by three people per second, the ability for the globe to feed itself diminishes. In an eco-system of limited resources, we are exponentially becoming restrained in our ability to produce high-quality, nutritious and affordable food, says KPMG food futurist Emma Wheeler. FUTURE OF FOOD
FT-Nov17-eMag
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