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About the Project

The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures, applied leading edge scientific and other evidence and futures analysis to identify critical issues and their consequences, and to identify and analyse possible policies and interventions for addressing those challenges.

The project

Drawing upon the latest scientific and other evidence from many organisations and researchers, the project adds value by:

  • Taking a long term, strategic outlook at likely challenges over the next 20 years to 2030 and the next 40 years to 2050. It has used futures techniques to embrace the many uncertainties inherent in the future, and to identify choices that are resilient to a range of outcomes.
  • Taking a very broad view of the food system and the wider context in which it operates. It has considered the concerns and experiences of many different types of stakeholder, from African smallholder to multinational retailer, from issues of governance to evolving consumer demand.
  • Commissioning new economic modelling to explore possible future trends in food prices.
  • Involving participants from a very wide range of disciplines: natural and social scientists and experts in risk management, economics and modelling.

Annex E of the project’s final report provides an overview of all the project’s evidence and reports. These include commissioned papers and reports synthesising specific aspects of the future challenges affecting the food system.

Groups involved in the project

Lead Expert Group

Professor Charles Godfray CBE FRS, Hope Professor at Oxford University, President of the British Ecological Society chaired the project’s Lead Expert Group. The group comprised leading academics in relevant disciplines and worked closely with the project team to ensure that the project’s findings were of the highest technical and scientific standard.

High Level Stakeholder Group

A High Level Stakeholder Group co-chaired by the sponsoring Ministers, provided strategic direction, advised on the key issues that the Project should address and how to achive action. The High Level Stakeholder Group included senior representatives from key national and international organisations, the international research community, the third sector and industry.