The Shift Is On: From Industrial Food to Integrated Systems

The way we think about food is changing dramatically

By Renske Lynde & Sarah Williams

Today’s food system — how we harvest, distribute, and consume the foods we eat — is both a thing of wonder and a threat to our modern world.

On one hand, the food we harvest feeds billions of people across the world safely and reliably. We can distribute this food cheaply to communities who would not otherwise have access to it. But on the other hand, agriculture uses more land and water than any other industry. The earth’s topsoil, which takes a full thousand years to regenerate a single inch, is degrading at a pace that will leave it depleted in 60 years. There are now more adults who are obese than underweight, according to researchers at Imperial College London, although the number of underweight individuals has risen by over 100 million in the last forty years. We know this state of play is unsustainable and we must think differently about how we grow, produce, and distribute the food we eat.

This transition from one food system to another is nothing new. In the past 10,000 years, five such food transformations have taken place (thanks to our friends at FoodCrunch for the framework this is based on).

Food System 1 was a hunter and gatherer society, where humans foraged plants and consumed animals as needed.

Food System 2 brought the emergence of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals. This enabled societies to settle in one place and grow in density.

The 1800s saw the advent of scientifically-based hybridization and selective breeding that characterizes Food System 3, based on the work of Gregor Mendel, the founder of modern genetics.

With the ability to choose specific traits in our food, control over production increased. In the years leading up to World War II, a range of technological innovations appeared on the scene — from synthetic chemicals, to the broad use of petrochemicals, to power agriculture, to the introduction of high-yield varieties — that ushered in what is commonly known as the Green Revolution or Food System 4.

Our current food system emerged in the 1970s to engage consumers in a globalized world. It has resulted in lengthy supply chains, standardization, and enormous scales of production and distribution. And while it was successful at achieving its stated goals, it is now clear that within the current structure of Food System 5, food producers will not be able to meet the key challenges now facing society, which include:

• Feeding 9.5 billion people by 2050 with nutritious sustenance for all
• Protecting and regenerating the environment
• Promoting and fostering human health

Enter Food System 6

It is a daunting set of challenges, but one we know is solvable. We are already seeing innovators and entrepreneurs develop creative solutions to shepherd the early stages of Food System 6. Upstream, innovators are capturing and translating on-farm data into actionable insights. Some farmers are also reusing organic waste to create value-added products. Along the supply chain, we see solutions that can extend the shelf-life of fresh produce and increase forecast accuracy to better match supply and demand. In addition to technological advances, Food System 6 is accompanied by regulatory and legislative changes as well. For-profit companies — both established players and start-ups—are responding to increasing consumer demand for transparency, governments are shaping policy from the federal farm bill to Philadelphia’s soda tax.

One of the underlying principles that defines Food System 6 is a shift away from a siloed approach to an integrated systems approach where decisions are made within the context of environmental, physical, and social health. This change is best understood as a move from the traditional value chain to a more nimble value cycle. This fundamental paradigm shift represents a system upgrade.

Our work focuses on this transition from Food System 5 to Food System 6. While this transition will not happen overnight, it is a multi-dimensional process that is already underway. Talk about the future of our food system often turns to technology and automating what already exists — let’s make it faster, better, shorter, simpler. But the reality is it’s about leveraging and integrating advancements across all sectors — from technology, to communications, to energy, to finance, to biological research and more. And doing so with a deep understanding of land and agriculture and nutrition and how our environment, our health, and our social wellbeing are all interconnected.

Before we can begin sourcing solutions to these challenges, we need to properly articulate the questions that come with the transition from one food system to another. These questions are part of a series of larger themes that affect producers, growers, retailers and, most importantly, consumers. For example, these themes include:

Understanding soil as a critical living organism rather than a blank slate.

As we better understand the relationship between soil, agricultural inputs, and everything we grow, we change everything from our farming practices to what consumers demand. How do we define and track soil health? How do we help consumers at retail understand the farming practices used to produce their food? How do we reduce harmful inputs or shift to better alternatives? How do we leverage data to better manage farming practices? How do we understand the use of monocultures in this context versus greater diversity?

Recognizing that tackling the high rate of food waste can yield win-win solutions.

30 percent of food produced for global consumption is lost or wasted, according to the UN, and addressing this waste through reduction, re-use, and recycling offers a real solution to the key challenges our food system must solve. How can we use better forecasting to reduce waste along the value cycle? How can we create closed loops to convert waste from a cost to a valued input that fuels the value cycle? How can we upcycle organic waste to create nutritious ingredients or animal feed or even bio-plastics? How can we improve food preservation at all stages of the value cycle? How can we create tools that reduce the time food spends in the value chain?

Realizing that the “how” is just as important as the “what” when it comes to food production.

Consumer demand for transparency is creating fundamental changes along the value cycle. Today, consumers want to know where a product and its ingredients are sourced (is it local?), how a product’s ingredients are sourced (what is the environmental impact?), how it’s grown (is it organic?)

Farmers are also disadvantaged by the lack of transparency. The current food system is exceedingly good at delivering a price signal through the value chain, but quality signals (such as nutrient density) are harder to communicate and therefore make it difficult for farmers to command a premium. While our understanding of the attributes we may want to trace will evolve, the fundamental need to provide greater transparency will be a key feature of our sixth food system and will serve both consumers and producers. At its core, greater transparency doesn’t just blindly track what’s happening, it changes how food is grown, how animals are raised, how products are formulated and delivered. New technologies, new processes, and new education will change how and what we trace.

These types of fundamental shifts are forming the engine for innovation. As we respond to these shifts with ingenuity and creativity, we are building Food System 6. Our sixth food system will both build upon and seek to improve and advance Food System 5 (and all previous food systems) and will include step change innovations and significant disruptions that are new.

This article was originally featured on the World Positive website.

For additional insights on where the food industry is headed, hear from Renske Lynde during PHA’s 2018 Summit, May 2-4 in Washington, DC.