The horizon scanning project ‘Reimagining the food system: scanning the horizon for emerging social innovations” (July 2021 – December 2021) embraced a bottom-up approach to investigate emerging food system practices and behaviours, with emphasis on social innovation, across the entire food chain, from production, processing and manufacturing, through supply, retail and services, to consumption and waste management.
This project consisted of:
- Conducting a horizon scanning process that led to the identification of over 200 weak signals/emerging trends that were further nested into 24 emerging issues along the food system segments. Team Prospectiva ran the horizon scanning and the clustering, showcasing the results in both visual (see the canvases below) and narrative format.
- Analyzing a subset of ten selected emerging issues by developing individual factsheets and an outlook of their interrelations.
- Drawing key insights from the emerging issues identified, particularly in terms of driving forces and actors, risks and opportunities and key uncertainties.
Read the briefing published by the European Environment Agency – Reimagining the food system through social innovations — European Environment Agency (europa.eu) – which integrates the key findings of this project.
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The project research team was composed of experts from: of ISINNOVA, Institutul de Prospectiva, Austrian Institute of Technology and Insight Foresight Institute.