I am glad to share with you the annual update of DigitalFoodLab’s report on trends shaping the future of food globally. You can download the report and its 82 pages here for free. Too long to read? Contact me here; we create bespoke presentations and workshops.
Let’s dive directly into the trends. From our analysis, we have identified 31 trends shaping the future of food. We have grouped them into six megatrends:
- Sustainable ingredients: the technologies used for alternative proteins and the growing ecosystem of ventures that go beyond animal protein by developing new ingredients (such as alternatives to fats, sugars, cacao…).
- The resilient farm: innovations to make farming more sustainable and resilient to climate change.
- Food as medicine: identifying ingredients and digital solutions to help consumers improve their diet and live longer and healthier lives.
- The Smart supply chain: digitising the food supply chain to increase efficiency while reducing waste.
- Food Automation: plan for a future where robots will cook and deliver part of our food.
- Digital retail: services enabling consumers to access food items more quickly and efficiently from their screens, innovative brands, and the next generation of connected stores.
How things have evolved in a year?
Compared to last year’s edition, there are a few points to underline:
- The evolution is less dramatic than it previously. This is a visible consequence of investors’ current lack of appetite (and somewhat of large companies) to invest in long-term and unproven trends.
- We added some trends such as plant-cell culture (here is an insight on the topic), sustainable livestock, and regenerative agriculture financing. This is a really positive sign, showing that even in a complicated funding environment, new hypes emerging.
- We also removed some trends, such as reusable packaging (removed as the innovation ecosystem has all but vanished), and updated others to better reflect their evolution.
Beyond these technical points, I’d like to point out two reasons for hope. First, a significant number of trends are emerging (on the right of the curve). Second, there is a growing pipeline of “future trends” that are gathering steam and showing a strong push for disruptive innovation.
How do we evaluate and position trends?
A trend is the combination of an ecosystem of startups, a set of technologies or new business models, and B2B or B2C needs. It generally follows the pattern below from discovery (1), excitement (2), reality check (3) when the technology or the business model associated reveals its limitation, emergence (4), and disruption (5) when it becomes mature.
To position trends, beyond DigitalFoodLab’s team expertise, and our discussions with entrepreneurs, investors, and large companies, we rank trends on four criteria:
- Strength of the ecosystem and its evolution: how much money is going into how many startups, and how is it evolving?
- Corporate involvement through partnerships, internal development, product launches…
- Tech maturity
- Market & regulatory readiness, including the « market pull » (is there an actual demand?)
When will it be on your plate?
The position on the curve is not really predictive of if and when a trend will mature. Below are our estimations (to be read as an average between the minimum and the maximum time each trend could take to reach maturity). This report provides a global outlook; in different geographies, many trends wouldn’t be in the same position.
I want to point out that it is still an estimation based on current market trends and technologies that evolve pretty fast. The aim here is to provide an insight into what to expect for the future of food and how to plan for it.
Get your own trend curve
The report provides a general overview of the main trends shaping the future of the agrifood value chain at a global level. However, a single technology can have multiple applications with various maturity levels (such as precision fermentation for sweeteners vs. dairy alternatives), and some trends are more advanced in specific geographies than others.
If you want to use this information to map your company’s innovation ecosystem and then make strategic decisions on where to focus your innovation efforts, we highly recommend that you take the time to create an industry and geographic-specific view (and give us a call to do it!).
