Time.com recently asked a series of "experts" to opine about the future of food and predict how our plates will change. The predictions are rather predictable as are the choice of experts.
The selection of experts only included one scientists - nutritionist Marion Nestle - and her future look to me a lot like our past, as many of us:
“will enjoy home gardens and locally and sustainably produced food, at greater cost. ”
It is implicitly assumed that home gardens and "local" are the same as "sustainable".
Indeed, many of the answers fell prey to a kind of romantic traditionalism.
The list of experts mainly included chefs, journalists, and food activists. Aside from Nestle, not one active food scientist was interviewed. There was one restaurant consultant and one investor in "companies dedicated to solving food problems" interviewed, but not one person currently engaged in farming for a living, no food microbiologists, no geneticist, no agronomists, no animal scientists, no food engineers, no one working for today's largest food and agricultural companies. In short, few of the kinds of people who are most likely to have the most substantive impact on the way we eat and farm in the future were interviewed.
Its like our thinking about the future of food has become stuck in some sort of retrogressive mindset.