Fresh from an event in San Francisco discussing the future of food, our US columnist Victor Martino gets out his crystal ball – and argues the market in 15 years will look quite similar to now.
Over the last few years the future of food – predicting it, creating start-ups based on products like faux meat and insects that the founders hope will be the hot tickets of the future, and employing technology throughout every aspect of the supply chain – has become a near-institutionalised part of the food industry.
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It’s also become a hot topic in the media, and even something people outside the industry, including the fourth estate, love to discuss and speculate on.
Such was the case on 30 October at the San Francisco Public Library where food industry folks, media and the interested general public packed the very large Koret Auditorium for an evening convened by the New York Times newspaper on ‘The Future of Food’.
Sitting at the head table were Julia Moskin, the Times‘ food writer, Rebekah Moses, who leads impact and sustainability strategy at Impossible Foods, and Kristyn Leach, a well-known food and agriculture activist who runs Namu Farms in Winters, California, which uses natural and regenerative farming practices.
The choice of the panel, the sustainability chief of a very mission-driven company – Impossible Foods’ CEO Pat Brown has as a publicly stated mission to eliminate animal products from the global food supply by 2035 – and Leach, a practitioner and advocate of regenerative food and farming, had polemics written all over it – the type of grist for the discussion mill that we often hear a bit too much of in the food industry today. We need to remember, it’s the consumer, not us “experts,” that matter the most.
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By GlobalDataMoses was clear, concise and adamant in her and Impossible Foods’ view on the future of food, which is that animal agriculture and associated land grazing is contributing too much to global climate change and therefore the solution to preserving our environmental future and food supply is soy-based meat products such as those Impossible Foods produces.
Moses says 30% of the land on the planet is devoted to livestock, which she says is bad for the climate and isn’t sustainable in the long term. Instead she argues that the future of food lies in creating tasty plant-based meat products that will convert the world’s meat eaters to what she says is a more sustainable alternative – plant-based meat.
The fast-growing popularity of the Impossible Burger, and its chief competitor the Beyond Burger, suggests this might be starting to happen, at least in the US and Western Europe. Animal meat sales are growing globally – and by about 3% annually in the US – too though, which also suggests consumers aren’t making an either-or choice – faux meat or animal meat – but rather more of an all of the above choice, substituting faux meat for animal meat (accept for vegans and vegetarians who eschew all animal meat) on certain eating occasions.
This behaviour has become known as flexitarianism, which I suggest is an eating habit that will shape the future of food. People don’t want to be told what they should eat and increasingly are shaping their own diets. Personalisation.
Leach embraced this all of the above, flexitarian approach – so much for polemics although there were a few sparks that flew during the evening – arguing that there’s plenty of room for plant-based, lab-based, conventional and regenerative food and farming styles. She particularly decried the concept of telling people what they should eat, instead suggesting that a better approach is to inform consumers on a local level about the pros and cons of food and how it’s produced across the board, which is something she does regularly as a farmer, food purveyor and activist for eaters.
The truth is, predicting the future of food is about as difficult as predicting the next political leader. For example, if somebody told you ten years ago that in 2019 Donald Trump would be President of the United States and Boris Johnson would be UK Prime Minister, you might think they were suffering from Mad Cow Disease.
I do agree (in part) with Impossible Foods’ Moses that plant-based meat – and soy will play a big part in that but so will other plants – will play a major role in the future of food. But I disagree with her assessment that it is the future of food. Call me flexitarian.
Her chief argument is that people will only convert to a primary plant-based diet if it’s in the form of meat. But the rapid growth of non-meat plant-based foods and drinks – plant-based milk has gone from zero to 15% of total milk sales in the US in 20 years, according to recent data, for example – shows this to not be the case.
I also don’t see a future of food, say in 2035, that doesn’t include animal meat and dairy. Try telling the Chinese, for example, that they can’t eat pork anymore. Or tell a Texan he needs to replace his Angus steak with a veggie burger. Good luck.
I also argue that the regenerative agriculture approach advocated by Leach is going to play as big of a role in the future of food as will faux meat. Big food companies, such as Danone, General Mills and others, along with a score or more of start-ups in the regenerative space, share that view, which is why these food companies are investing hundreds of millions in the aggregate in regenerative farming and food products.
Impossible Foods CEO Brown has long described the project of creating faux meat as an environmental imperative. “Every aspect of the animal-based food industry is vastly more environmentally disruptive and resource-inefficient than any plant-based system,” he argues.
One can argue the pros and cons of the scientific merits of this. I’m not going to do so here. But the reality is the future of food is predicated on the same key variable as the past and present of food is, which is the consumer and the concept of consumer choice. Generally speaking, most people don’t and won’t base their food choices on an environmental argument. Taste, nutrition and convenience are the primary criteria, along with family tradition.
The best arbiter for the future of food is the marketplace, which is where the beauty of what companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing in the alternative meat segment exists. They are expanding consumer choice with tasty plant-based meats.
It’s also what big food companies such as Danone and General Mills are doing in the regenerative space, combined with all the plant-based food and drink and other food innovation initiatives a myriad of start-ups are unveiling across the board, including fusion meat and veg products like the new blended products from Tyson Foods and others. They too are expanding consumer choice.
We have more food choices today than ever before, which in my analysis is why flexitarianism is growing so fast – it’s the logical eating or dietary choice for people to make in a world filled with food choices.
My prognostication for the future of food circa 2035 is that it won’t be materially different than eating circa 2019. The changes will be around the edges.
We will still eat animal meat and dairy but an increasing percentage offer will be plant-based.
Packaged and processed foods aren’t going to disappear but they will get better and cleaner. Canned vegetables ruled until the 1970s, followed by frozen. Today fresh, not canned or frozen veggies, are what consumers demand and prefer.
The 1950s -1970s “belly-filler” Swanson TV dinner gave way to the Stauffers’ “premium” frozen entree in the 80s and 90s, which is now playing second fiddle to the upscale ethnic frozen food bowl.
Technology will play an increasing role in food and the food industry but the grocery store will remain the primary venue where consumers get their food. It will just be much more tech-enabled. The food and grocery industries will be almost fully digitalised by 2035.
And since we’re nearing the number one food holiday (top in food sales too) here in America, Thanksgiving, I predict the majority of Americans in 2035 will still be sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal of turkey (the actual bird), bread stuffing, potatoes, veggies and all the other traditional fixins, although faux turkey sales are on the rise this year.
just-food columnist Victor Martino is a California-based strategic marketing and business development consultant, analyst, entrepreneur and writer, specialising in the food and grocery industry. He is available for consultation at: victormartino415@gmail.com and https://twitter.com/VictorMartino01.
