A Bird’s View on Food Science and Technology Priorities for Society

Abstract

The society’s primary need is food, for which food science and technology (FST) provides a scientific basis. Food should be available, accessible and affordable for all, at any time, even amid planetary and societal challenges. One may thus ask, ‘how can food science and technology most efficiently contribute to sustainable food systems?’ This requires a strategic process of identifying and categorizing key FST themes, relating these to challenges and exploring them in food systems contexts. Main FST orientations must then be elaborated and prioritized with respect to potential futures. A coherent set of five methodologies is proposed herein to support this process. These include reviewing agendas, thought-experiments, dynamic game methods, an operational bird concept and a scenario development tool. The first results reveal the following prioritized main FST orientations: (1) carbon-neutral products, (2)/(3) security of diverse diets and zero-input–output loss, (4) nature- and culture-inspired products and (5) scalable mobile technologies. The orientations are part of and presented in a complex food systems web. Repeating this exercise by an EFFoST-driven initiative involving FST experts and young professionals is strongly recommended. They are capable of broadly overseeing challenges, categories of FST themes and orientations, food system actors and scenarios of (their) potential futures.