The Future of Food: Production, Innovation, and Technology

For the next six months (May 1 to October 15, 2015), the world will be focused on a very important topic: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.” This is the theme of Expo Milano 2015 (also known as the “World’s Fair”), which is taking place in Milan, Italy, and will be the world’s largest, most historical gathering on food. More than twenty million visitors will visit Expo and hundreds of millions more will be involved in food-related in-person and virtual conversations around the world. This will be an important time for each of us–including children, parents, and teachers, as well as world leaders and influential stakeholders–to share our expertise and points-of-view as we come together to listen, learn, grow, and develop important solutions.   Currently, there are 145 official country participants representing 94% of the world’s population. Building on its central theme, Expo 2015 notes that “every participating country has been charged with questioning and offering solutions to the major challenges related to the future of food, and each will provide those answers by drawing upon its own culture and traditions.”   The theme of each of the country pavilions highlights the wonderful diversity of our planet. From A to Z–Afghanistan to Zimbabwe–we will learn about topics such as rice (Cambodia), cocoa (Ghana), coffee (Ethiopia), cereals and tubers (Togo), food security and sustainability (Senegal), food sovereignty (Cuba), and water and lotus (Vietnam), to name just a few.   The USA Pavilion, “American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet,” will “highlight American industry, products, and entrepreneurship within the contexts of sustainability, nutrition and health, technology, and innovation.” In March 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama stated: “we’re going to put together an outstanding USA pavilion that showcases American innovation to improve agriculture and nutrition and the health of people around the globe.”   As we consider what innovation is needed to improve our global agriculture, nutrition, and health and fulfill Expo’s “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” challenge, we also must consider a very important demographic change. Between now and 2050, the world’s population will increase from 7.2 billion today to 9.6 billion in 2050. This will require a 70% increase in food production, without additional land or natural resources to do so.   From farm to table, much about food production has changed over the past decades–for both farmers and consumers. Like any other business, farmers must adapt to a changing world. Today, we know that each U.S. farmer feeds more people worldwide than ever before, at 155 people per farmer. In 1960, that number was 25.8 people. By 2050, the same farmer will need to feed 232 people.   With finite resources, it will take innovation and a variety of technologies to meet the world’s food demand. This includes using new technologies. At every step of the journey from farm to fork, technology is helping us produce a safe, abundant, sustainable, and nutritious food supply. Precision agriculture, with the aid of GPS satellites, can target individual crop treatments to the smallest plots of soil, which reduces environmental impacts. Advances in livestock production, from climate control to the nutritional qualities of feed, have improved animal health and welfare, and boosted agricultural output. Refrigeration and modern packaging technologies increase the safety of our food, the distance across which it can be transported, and its extended freshness.   Among the most successful and still more promising advances is food and agricultural biotechnology, which includes a range of benefits for the food supply through various breeding and other techniques. At its heart, food biotechnology is the science of employing the tools of modern genetics to enhance beneficial traits of plants, animals, and their food components.   Dr. Lowell Catlett, Dean and Chief Administrative Officer, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, stated: “The United States has become a global provider for food only because we have employed technology to make us far more productive so that we can produce more calories than we can consume, so that we can help feed a hungry world, and the only way we have done that is with technology. . . . [W]e have got to invest more in technology than ever to make sure that we can feed that . . . nine [billion people]. The resource base says we can do it, but we cannot do it without technology.”   Food biotechnology can help feed our growing planet, while also bringing several additional benefits along the way. Not only do insect-protected and virus-resistant biotech crop varieties produce hardier plants, leading to higher yields, but plants are also being engineered to grow in places where they would not survive before.   Biotech crops can also aid in protecting the environment by producing herbicide-tolerant varieties, thereby decreasing the amount of pesticides used in farming. Decreasing pesticide use can have a positive impact on the health and well-being of wildlife, decrease farmers’ exposure to pesticides, and contribute to a cleaner water supply.   And, with biotechnology, the food itself can be more healthful and nutritious, as crops with enhanced nutritional traits make their way to the supermarket. These foods can help to combat chronic diseases by providing more healthful compounds, including higher levels of antioxidants and vitamins, and lower amounts of fats we should limit. Scientists have also begun to target allergy-causing proteins.   Dr. Robert Thompson, former Dean of Agriculture at Purdue University and U.S. government and World Bank official, who is currently a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, raises an important, and, unfortunately, too often overlooked technology-related topic when it comes to “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”: malnutrition.   Thompson estimated that there are more than two billion people in the world who are anemic, and several hundred million people suffer from blindness as a result of vitamin A deficiency. “Perhaps the saddest of all is iodine deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, where iodine supplementation is not a common practice. (We have it in the form of iodized salt in the U.S.) Iodine deficiency in the diets of expectant mothers and children under two years of age can cause irreversible stunting in both physical and mental development.  That’s a tragic consequence for society as a whole.”   Thompson predicts: “It is possible to enhance the nutritional content of staple foods using advanced research tools such as genetic engineering, a technique that virtually every scientific authority in the world has looked at and concluded is not dangerous for human health or the environment.   Consider rice, the principal staple in the diets of more than two billion people, but which contains virtually no iron or vitamin A and lacks two of the essential amino acids. Researchers have already demonstrated that the vitamin A content of rice can be increased, producing a nutrient-rich grain called ‘Golden Rice.’  If available, Golden Rice could help hundreds of millions of people who subsist principally on rice to avoid blindness. Just think of the additional health benefits that could be realized if the nutritional composition of rice could also be boosted to contain adequate levels of iron and the two missing essential amino acids.”   Thompson’s vision is quickly becoming a reality in the developing world. The IFIC Foundation and other science-based organizations partnered with the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) April 12-14, 2015, in Nairobi, Kenya for the International Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology and Biosafety Communications. More than 150 leading scientists and communicators from 27 countries around the world gathered to develop consensus on the science, safety, and communication strategies necessary to ensure consumers globally can make informed food choices and attain the benefits that agricultural innovations are making possible. ISAAA’s 2014 report (ISAAA Brief 48) shows how modern biotechnology has transformed farming into a profession that harvests agronomic, economic, and socio-cultural benefits. It features the stories of how biotech crops, particularly Bt cotton in China and India and biotech corn in the Philippines, are changing the lives of small resource-poor farmers. More information and a final version of a “Nairobi Declaration” from the April 2015 conference can be found at: www.isaaa.org   For any technology to be truly useful, it must first be adopted. Barriers to adoption include fear and misperception, both on the part of users and, ultimately, the consumers who stand to benefit from technological progress. That’s why for those who care about the world’s capacity to feed the future, communication and education are critical.   Building on Dr. Catlett and Thompson’s comments on biotechnology, we’d like to provide some insights on Americans’ views on the topic. As we have learned through the International Food Information Council’s (IFIC) Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology Survey, as well as other research, American consumers are not predisposed to fear and when they understand food biotechnology and its benefits, they respond positively. We hope these insights are instructive for other countries around the world.   IFIC’s 2014 Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology Survey (the most recent survey, as it is now conducted bi-annually), was the 16th such survey since 1997, and it has offered trended U.S. consumer insights on plant and animal biotechnology and labeling longer than any publicly available data in the U.S.   The 2014 Survey shows that more than seven in 10 American consumers agree that modern agriculture–conventional farming using today’s modern tools and equipment–can be sustainable and produce high-quality, nutritious foods. The two-thirds of the Survey’s respondents say it is important that their food be produced in a sustainable way, affordably–with the same or fewer resources–and in a way that is better for the environment.   Biotechnology is merely a refinement on processes that already occur in nature, and a step beyond traditional methods of crossbreeding that have been used to genetically enhance agricultural products for centuries.   Our survey begins with open-ended questions, which are more reliable when it comes to taking the real pulse of consumers than surveys with a small number of carefully worded questions designed to provoke concerns.   We believe this technique yields a more accurate view of what is most important to Americans.  When it comes to food labels, the results show that biotechnology, or even terms like “GMOs,” is not a top-of-mind concern for the vast majority of consumers.   Following the open-ended questions, we get more specific about biotechnology and genetic engineering, but please note that we do not prompt the term “GMO” for two major reasons:  

1. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided labeling guidance to industry, reaffirmed as recently as April 2013, that the scientifically accurate terms are “bioengineered,” “genetically engineered,” or “foods produced using biotechnology.” Their analysis considers the term “genetically modified organism” or “GMO” as potentially misleading to consumers, because it is a distinction without a difference. Humans have been genetically modifying crops and animals for tens of thousands of years, but through far less precise or efficient methods than we enjoy today.

 

2. Our own consumer research since the early 1990s has found “GMO” to be off-putting at best or even frightening to many consumers. And unfortunately in today’s marketplace, it is used as something to avoid and a pejorative, rather than a way to inform consumers.

  General Impressions of Food Biotechnology When we asked the respondents to offer their impressions of food biotechnology (before mentioning any benefits), there was an almost even split between 28% who were favorable to the technology and 29% who were unfavorable. More than four in 10 were either neutral or didn’t know enough to offer a response.   Consumer Trust   ‡         The 2014 IFIC Food Technology Survey asked about which sources of information on food biotechnology consumers trust most.  ‡         Health organizations, cited by 50% of respondents ranked first, followed by Federal government agencies and health professionals, at 45% each.   ‡         Farmers rated highly for 39% of respondents, while scientists were trusted by 33%.   ‡         At the other end of the spectrum, journalists, bloggers, and celebrities were trusted by consumers only in the single digits.   Benefits of Food Biotechnology   When American consumers became aware that some products on the market or in the pipeline offered nutrition and health-related benefits, they were overwhelmingly positive.   Referring back to our point on language above, it is not surprising that consumers may shy away when provoked to be concerned about “genetically modified organisms in your food.” But notice the difference in support when we use more informative language to explain some of the benefits of the technology:   ‡         72% said they were likely to purchase products made with oils modified by biotechnology to provide more healthful fats.   ‡ 69% were likely to buy such products if they were modified to reduce the potential for carcinogens—the same number who would buy products if they were modified to be protected from insect damage and to require fewer pesticide applications.   ‡ 69% also said they would buy bread, crackers, cookies, cereals, or pasta made with flour modified to use less land, water, or pesticides.   Consumers’ Favored Uses When we looked more generally at the most favored uses of food biotechnology, reducing pesticide applications topped the list, followed by keeping food prices stable, and helping feed undernourished people around the world.   In our nearly two decades of consumer research, we have learned that consumers are supportive of the many benefits of food and agricultural biotechnology when clearly articulated.   As such, we are providing a glimpse of modern agriculture in an animated video, “Your Food, Farm to Table,” that we hope will prompt some thoughtful conversations during the six months of Expo and beyond.   The video shows how farmers in the U.S. and globally are working to produce our food year-round, including using technology to safely produce more food, while putting less stress on our natural resources. With more “precise” information at their fingertips, farmers can be more selective with supplies and resources such as fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, and other fuel-run equipment, and irrigation water. As a result, they can reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, pesticide applications, soil erosion and water run-off--in turn, improving sustainability.   To quote Dr. Mitchell Davis, Executive Vice President of the James Beard Foundation and Chief Creative Officer of the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015, “[t]his is a watershed moment for the food world–with more people engaged and informed about the complex issues associated with global food than ever before[.] We all share one global food system. Let’s come together to figure out how we want it to work.” We hope that by the end of Expo 2015, the next generation of food leaders will be inspired to confront challenges and provide solutions so that tomorrow’s world will have access to healthful, nutritious, safe, and affordable foods. We must be focused on helping the next generation employ modern agricultural practices and innovate others to sustain future generations on our growing planet.   About the authors: David B. Schmidt is President and CEO and Kimberly Reed is Executive Director of the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation www.foodinsight.org.     Survey Methodology: The public can access the full text of the survey’s questions and answers, along with many other educational resources, at foodinsight.org/biotech. The 2014 IFIC Food Technology Survey polled 1,000 adults who are reflective of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and had just a 3% margin of error.