Robin Bourgeois

1. The state of global foresight
in food and agriculture
Robin Bourgeois
GFAR Secretariat

2. What do we know: global foresight
 Turn food security attention to the needs of the poor, urban
and rural, and particularly of poor farmers;
 Focus on farmers and their perspectives for the future;
 Ecosystem degradation and climate change;
 A range of scientific approaches, paradigms, concepts and
methodologies must be maintained in order to develop
research on more and more complex issues.

3. The Inventory: 14 cases
• Sustainable food consumption and production in a resource-constrained world
• A table for seven billion: Six billion have enough to eat – (only) one billion to go
• Biofuels and agricultural markets: Implications for food security
• Towards sustainable world food systems: drivers, key issues and research needs
• Does Less Meat for Some Mean Cheaper Food for Others?
• Exploring the limits of food and farming systems: the Agrimonde scenarios
• World food supply in a context of environmental change and increasingly competing
claims on natural resources
• Debunking the water scarcity myth: understanding future water use challenges
• What are the likely developments in world agriculture towards 2050??
• What challenges is agriculture facing? Five scenarios for 2050.
• The Future of Food and Farming
• Climate change impacts on agricultural yields
• Global bioenergy potentials from agricultural land in 2050
• Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050: Scenarios, Results, Policy
Options

4. Adjusting the international research agenda with new dimensions
• Maximizing the volume of production per unit of factor
cannot fully respond to the new challenges.
• Incorporate broader and long-term societal dimensions
• Guide research towards outputs that will
– Optimize how resources are used for food production given
sustainability objectives and social choices,
– Respond to the conditions that wider dimensions beyond
agricultural production will impose on different types of farmers
in different places.

5. Observing current practices
 Methods: Quantitative Mixed Qualitative
 18 months (from 3 to 36)
Quantitative Mixed Qualitative
 Less than US$ 500 000 (starting from less than 50,000)
Quantitative Mixed Qualitative
 Include less than 50 people mostly scientists
 Other stakeholders are rarely directly engaged all the way
through the process

6. Lessons learnt from current practices
 linking different disciplines in an
interdisciplinary way, not as a
collection of discipline skills;
 combining quantitative modelling
with qualitative scenarios;
 involving broad stakeholders
groups, widening the scope of the
studies.

7. Impactimpact
Category of
Diffusion Evaluation
Influence Change
 Influence on
Sustainable Food Consumption in a resource-constrained
RA/FD LS DM TIP TEP OC Public Reports Articles/Book Conferences Yes/No
Brief 01 x x no
awareness and
Brief 03
world
A Table for Seven Billion x x x x no
Biofuels and Agricultural markets: implications for food
capacity to foster
Brief 09
security
x x x x no
Brief 15 Does less meat mean cheaper food for others? x x x no
debates
Brief 10
Exploring futures of food and farming systems: the
Agrimonde scenarios
x x x x no
Towards sustainable world food systems: drivers, key
Brief 13
issues ans research needs
x no
 Impact policies
Brief 17
World food supply in a context of increasingly competing
claims
x x x x x no
Debunking the water scarcity myth: understanding future
internally or externally
Brief 21
water use challenges
x no
What are the likely developments in world agriculture
Brief 38
towards 2050?
x x x no
What challenges is agriculture facing? Five Scenarios for
Brief 40
2050
x x x x x x yes

No Brief
No Brief
The Future of Food and Farming
Development and Climate Change
x
x
x x x x
x
x yes
no
No Brief Global bioenergy potentials from agricultural land in 2050 x x no
No Brief Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050 x x no
TOTAL 10 2 2 8 5 0 7 6 5

8. Towards improving global foresight
= Participating to the Forward Thinking Platform bringing together
foresight practitioners from various sectors to advance thinking, tools
and methods in foresight for agriculture;
= Helping the incorporation of multiple visions based on foresight as
orientations for the SRF Action Plan;
= Supporting and engaging in foresight practitioners - decision makers
policy dialogue arena at global level

9. Towards improving global foresight
+  foresight processes;
Regular engagement of national and regional actors in global
+  Regular foresight and policy dialogue arena;
+  on the Farmers of the Future.
A collective multi-disciplinary multi-sector foresight investigation

10. THANK YOU

11. The report proposes collective actions towards improved
foresight (pages 26-30). In your opinion, what should the
international agricultural research and development community
commit, in relation to these collective actions?