The next 30 years will be a critical test of the global food system, and having agriculture technology solutions is essential to meet the challenge, says Jack Bobo, CEO of food consulting firm Futurity, Potomac, Md.
With the global population expected to rise from 7.8 billion now to nearly 9.5 billion by 2050, food production will need to increase from 50% to 100% over the next three decades in some categories, Bobo said during an Aug. 20 presentation at the U.S. Apple Association’s virtual Outlook 2020 event.
“We need to (increase output) using less land, less water and less fertilizers,” he said.
To accomplish that, growers need to be able to tell the story of how they produce food in a way earns the trust of consumers, he said.
Two competing world views of food production make telling the story complicated.
“We have a slow food movement that says we should be producing food in the way it was produced 100 years ago, and then on the other hand, we have this high-tech intensive agriculture view that suggests that we need to be moving faster and need to do everything more intensively than we were doing before,” he said. “We need to find a way of actually bringing them together because we need the best of both worlds if we are going address the challenges that we face.”
People love innovation almost as much as they despise change, and Bobo said there is “no place that people despise change more” than in the food they eat.
“How do we ensure that people think of food innovation, instead of food change, so that they are excited about the opportunity and not turned off by it?”
He said consumers have never cared more, and known less, about how their food is produced than now.
He believes science and technology can solve the problems farmers face but added he is a “regulatory pessimist” and not convinced that consumers will allow farmers to use new technology.
“It’s important to recognize that science tells us what we can do, but it’s the public that tells us what we shouldn’t do,” he said. The public won’t allow growers to use new technologies unless they trust producers.
“The important thing is that we actually need to be worthy of the consumers trust,” he said. “We need to engage with them and we need to do a better job of communicating.”
If growers can gain the trust of consumers, they will be able to develop a more sustainable future, he said.
“Consumers don’t just want to know where their food comes from, but they want their food purchases to be an extension of the values they hold,” he said.
Those values can include environmental sustainability, social justice, animal welfare and other issues.
“When consumers spend their scarce dollars, (they) want to know that they’re advancing the values they believe in, so as organizations, companies and industries, (we) need to understand not just what people want, but why they want them and be able to communicate that.”
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