Symposium Food for Future

The genetic code of crops and livestock animals determines most of the agricultural traits. Recent technological breakthroughs enable to crack this genetic code with an unprecedented accuracy and speed. Now that we know the genetic building blocks we can combine the favourable genes by breeding. How new opportunities, such as gene editing and synthetic biology, can contribute to improving food quality and increasing food production will be discussed before the break.

During the session before lunch we move to technology. Technological innovations penetrate into all industries, including the food production chain. We have drones as spy in the sky to check and serve crop cultivation at the square meter level. With vertical farming, trees now literally can grow into heaven ‘to Mars and beyond’, using LED as our easy-to-manipulate sunny alternative. Harvesting in field and greenhouse becomes a robot action. Chipped cows are self-supporting to get fed and being milked. Large-scale food transitions, involving all the stakeholders in multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary settings, are at hand.

The lonely fisherman in his boat at sea at sunrise is a romantic anachronism. Food production surmounts country and climate borders, and definitely goes off-shore. Our real world becomes increasingly smaller, that is our feeling. Our world’s climate is changing continuously as a result of many interacting causes, that is our reality. Think big, think global, think circular. Global food security and global sustainable livestock systems are the aims now and will be discussed in the afternoon of 22nd of June.

A healthy long life is the resultant of personal genetics and life style including daily exercise and balanced nutrition. Dietary guidelines are useful, but apparently hardly improve the average food consumption patterns that increasingly lead to a wide range of chronic and immune-related diseases, with a strongly reduced quality of life, and high health care costs, at the end. Are the challenges in the supermarket too much tempting or the societal food and drink habits too much fixed? Before the break in the morning of 23rd of June we will reflect on this.

Food is in motion; food is emotion. Look at social media and visit the book (cook) shops. Should we stop to eat meat and cheat ourselves with structured and processed plant-derived look-alikes? Or should we change to well-recognizable seaweed as the highly nutritious alternative novel food? In this era of 3D printing, man can design and produce healthy food to any desired ‘image and likeness’. Food for thought at the end of the session in the morning, right before lunch on the 23rd of June.

Are you eating what you expect to eat? Verification of the composition, the processing or the origin of our foods is a job in its own right: food forensics. It serves to uphold the law. It helps the consumer in his choices regarding lifestyle and consumption behaviour. It supports the food industry to move on the right track in its use of ingredients and supplements. Chemistry in our food production and in our foods: should we take care, or will it take care of us?