City Food Lecture: ‘Trust and tech will shape our food system'
Trust is already driving a number of important trends in the food system, namely the growing desire for transparency, the rising demand for locally-produced food, a thirst for experience over ‘stuff’, and efforts to make food healthier and tackle a national health crisis in the UK.
Testing products’ provenance; having respect for farmers; paying a fair price to allow them to reinvest in agriculture; caring about workers’ rights and animal welfare; protecting resources; and contributing to communities were all highlighted as important measures for food companies to take.
Fresh Produce Journal
This is from the full report:
Food businesses must gain consumer trust through transparency and sustainability, Compass boss Dominic Blakemore tells City Food Lecture
BY FRED SEARLE
Wednesday 27th February 2019
Trust will be the currency of the next decade for the global food system, the chief executive of the world’s largest foodservice company has said, stressing the importance of transparency and sustainability, and how technology can drive progress.
Giving the annual City Food Lecture at London’s Guildhall, Dominic Blakemore highlighted trust as the most important quality for any food business to create as he envisaged what the global food system will look like in 2050, when the world’s population is set to exceed nine billion.
He added that trust is becoming more and more important in the food sector given the changing priorities of consumers, noting that millennials and Generation Z now outnumber baby boomers, and by next year more than half of the workforce will be millennials or younger.
Recent surveys referenced by the speaker show that six in 10 consumers refuse to buy products from companies they do not trust, and 90 per cent of millennials say they are more likely to buy from companies that support local issues.
According to Blakemore, trust is already driving a number of important trends in the food system, namely the growing desire for transparency, the rising demand for locally-produced food, a thirst for experience over ‘stuff’, and efforts to make food healthier and tackle a national health crisis in the UK.
The way to build trust with consumers, he told the audience, is through transparency and sustainability – building trust “literally from the ground up”.
Testing products’ provenance; having respect for farmers; paying a fair price to allow them to reinvest in agriculture; caring about workers’ rights and animal welfare; protecting resources; and contributing to communities were all highlighted as important measures for food companies to take.
However, Blakemore warned that they are not future-proof – “arguably, today’s agricultural model is fundamentally broken, and it will not sustain the population without destroying the planet in the process,” he said.
“Thirty-five per cent of climate change comes from agriculture today and a third of food is wasted in the supply chain. More than ever, progress is being linked to the common good. Sustainability is no longer an option, it’s an absolute necessity.”
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