Key issues

These long-term future scenarios describe alternative logics of change in a vast, rapidly evolving and very complex field. The size and scope of change is likely to be very significant for many actors involved. These are some of the issues that will inform the future scenarios:

• Efficiency of food production
• Drivers for sustainable agriculture and its economic, social and environmental impact
• Societal reactions with respect to security of food supply, food sovereignty and fair trade
• Global insecurity and risk of food terrorism and the need to regain more self sufficiency in food supply
• Disrupting disease outbreaks that are particularly affecting agricultural output
• Rebalancing of land-use to accommodate food vs. fuel use.
• Competition for arable land for living, industrial, recreational and ecological uses
• Assessing real gains from biofuel production (agriculture, job creation, poverty)
• Evolving value of agricultural produce, impact on commodity markets
• Creation of new markets for biofuels, set-up of regulatory framework, potential role of labelling and certification
• The role of agriculture in the global community: globalisation and WTO agreements balancing world agricultural production and economy
• Country competitiveness for sustainable biofuel production
• Efficiency in biofuels production, impact (or not) of breakthroughs in renewable energy technologies
• Technical, economical and even political obstacles to a fast development of alternative energy generating and energy saving technologies
• Evolving value perception of energy, distance and time
• Biotechnology and genetic engineering and the two opposing world views in terms of risks and opportunities, confronting the established with the growing economies, and all potential impacts (economic, social, environmental)
• Boundary blurring between industries (energy, agriculture)
• Urbanisation of society versus rural and agricultural communities
• Realisation of global environmental change as a result the impact of human activity, impact of agreements (Kyoto protocol, etc) as change factor. Opportunities with CDM mechanisms.
• Consumer awareness of ecological issues as new motivators for consumer spending: a product’s ecological footprint as purchase motivation
• Food diet (protein sources, obesity and health)