Reframing food narratives

The challenge 

Many of the dominant narratives that have led to our current food systems and continue to drive change tend to focus on one priority alone, often at the expense of other needs. Be it yield maximisation, providing “consumer choice”, low prices or delivering short-term return on investment, this drives innovation that often ignores or exacerbates social and environmental challenges.  

Many change efforts focus on incremental improvements, rather than the deeper transformation needed to respond to how much and how fast our world is changing. Or, they focus on tackling issues in isolated ways rather than solving for multiple challenges – for example, working on supply chain decarbonisation in isolation from protecting biodiversity or improving access to healthy diets. 

Finally, progress on many important questions is hampered by polarised or competing narratives about what’s needed, which can fail to consider different cultures and contexts, and leave many stakeholders and voices out of debates, decisions and action about the future of food. 

The result is that progress on the future of food systems is falling short of the deep and urgent transformation needed in the face of unprecedented and interconnected global pressures – with widespread social injustice in our global food system, and diet-related public health, climate, nature, and farmer livelihoods all in crisis.

Our approach

We collaborate with actors across the food system, including business, philanthropy, civil society, government, farming communities, academia and investors, and along the value chain (from agriculture to brands, retail and foodservice), to navigate and unlock progress on complex food transition topics and challenges, and to reframe the change that's needed. We do this through one-to-one partnerships and ambitious multi-stakeholder collaborations.

If you are a food-focused organisation ambitious for leadership and positive impact, we can help you to put deep and urgent transformation for social and ecological justice and regeneration, at the heart of your efforts to drive change, within your organisation and more widely.

We combine our food systems approach and our ambition for just and regenerative outcomes, with our deep expertise in applied futures, diagnosis, system change, strategy development, stakeholder engagement, and mindful facilitation. We can work with your organisation to redefine ambitions and action in critical areas, such as: ​

• Pathways to "sustainable nutrition": unlocking progress towards healthy, sustainable diets, that are accessible and affordable for all, while restoring nature and ensuring decent livelihoods for food-producing communities.​

• Strategic nature and biodiversity risk and opportunity: recognising the critical importance of nature for agriculture, the food industry, and wider human health and wellbeing.​

• Just transition implications of food system shifts and disruptions for workers in different regions and supply chains, and the need to reconfigure value chains to ensure decent livelihoods and positive social impact.

Contact our Food team if you are interested to:

• Develop an ambitious, future-fit organisational purpose, strategy or transformation framework, to ensure your organisation or sector can thrive into the future, in a way that's aligned with what the world really needs from the food system​

• Engage, inspire and skill up your senior decision-makers on food system & sustainability topics and trends​

• Navigate complex food transition themes through bespoke research, insight generation or thought leadership​

• Apply our food transition insights and practical tools in your organisation or sector to support progress on critical risks and opportunities​

• Benefit from constructive critique and challenge, and embed futures and systems change capabilities into your organisation

• Work with like-minded organisations as well as new perspectives within and beyond your sector, to explore, understand and ​shape action on key food transition challenges and topics

• Invite an expert speaker from our team as a guest lecturer, keynote speaker, panellist, chair, moderator or expert facilitator for your conference, event or workshop, on food systems transition or specific topics related to the future of food

Contact our Food team to discuss collaboration opportunities​

Find out more about our work with business

Examples of our work and resources

Future Food Trajectories toolkit 

The Climate and Health Toolkit for Food Businesses

Food and drink businesses—with their supply chains rooted in agricultural production, their strong relationships with farmers and producers and their brands which influence millions of consumers—are key to developing and delivering positive, integrated solutions for climate and health across food and drink systems. 

Recognising the critical role that food systems play in enabling health outcomes and responding to our climate crisis, Forum for the Future has expanded the existing work of the Climate & Health Coalition to include a Climate & Health Coalition Food Cluster.

With leading Climate & Health Food Cluster partners Britvic, SIG and Waitrose, we are working to enable private sector players from across the food and drink industry to accelerate the transformation of our food and agricultural systems towards outcomes that deliver positive health and climate outcomes for both people and planet. The Climate and Health Toolkit for Food Businesses contains practical information, resources and key activities to guide and support food businesses in driving solutions. 

Explore the Toolkit

Contact us to find out more or join in

Read our blogpost outlining some of Forum for the Future's observations and insights about the global food transition: what's slowing down progress, what’s going well and giving us hope?

 

Recipes for food system change

On the Futures Centre we share insights from our work on food including: what does innovation look like that’s for what the world really needs? What do diversity, resilience, net zero look like done well, with good outcomes for food and sustainable nutrition?

The future of protein

Our multi-stakeholder collaboration on the future of protein convened change-makers over several years, to explore routes to sustainable, nutritious, affordable protein for all to 2040 – generating cutting-edge insight and collaborative action on key questions including animal feed, culinary skills, school meals, and next steps for plant-based innovation.

Protein Challenge Southeast Asia 

Our work on protein continues through Protein Challenge Southeast Asia initiative launched in 2021, a multi-year inquiry working with stakeholders across the food system in Southeast Asia, the ‘protein visionaries’ who will set a more ambitious approach towards sustainable protein in the region. The programme was one of eight finalists for the 2023 Food Planet Prize, the world’s largest environmental prize.