Opinion by food futurist, Tony Hunter
We hear daily that new technology X or company Y will disrupt a particular part of the food system. Why do this? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disrupt as “1 a: to break apart: rupture or b: to throw into disorder or 2 a: to interrupt the normal course or unity of, and b business: to cause upheaval in (an industry, market, etc.).
Looking at these definitions, ‘disruption’ of the global food system is the last thing that we need. During the last five years, Covid and the Russia-Ukraine war have shown us the effects of relatively minor food system disruption; and they have not been pretty. According to the World Economic Forum the number of global undernourished rose from some 560 million in 2018 to 733 million in 2023. Even food rich countries have had their share of disruption to their food supply.
However, we are certainly going to need new food technologies to feed a growing global population and middle classes. Whether in the form of alternative proteins, cellular agriculture, synthetic biology or anything else they need to produce food using less resources. This is because we need to stay within planetary boundaries; our world is not an infinite well of resources, it has limits.
In the foreseeable future what we need is not to disrupt but to supplement the current food system. If some food sectors do decline in the long term, we need a managed transition, not a sudden collapse.
A sudden collapse in any food sector would have disastrous consequences, not just for food poor nations but for many food rich countries as well. Take animal agriculture as an example. If a total disruption occurred and we stopped raising new animals for food there would be no chickens in sixty days, no pigs in six to nine months and no cattle in twelve to eighteen months! If alternatives have not scaled in time to meet the demand, imagine the global chaos.
Disruption of the food industry may be a trendy term used to try and drive investment, but it’s far from what we truly need.
