Those and other eating trends have been outlined in a comprehensive report from leading food retailer Sainsbury’s, reaching out as far as 2169 in its efforts to plot the food and farming landscape ahead.
Looking to 2025 it identifies plant-based foods as the most rapidly emerging type, already increasing at 65% a year.
The rise in hydroponic plants is also expected to strengthen, providing opportunities for more urban fresh food sources to be established, including places like disused tunnels and warehouses, using half the space of conventional horticulture plots to produce the same amounts.
Technology including low-energy LED lighting and battery power is bringing a level of vertical integration into the food chain, with the likes of catering businesses and restaurants having a stake in plant and equipment to grow their own raw foods.
Alongside the local supply growth will come environmental foot-printing apps to give customers greater clarity on their food’s impact. The apps are likely to be integrated into Google Maps to give tailored information to customers keen to eat low-carbon or low-calorie foods.
Swiss company Eaternity already provides food service businesses with carbon footprints of suppliers’ foods.
The report said the trend to a wider range of foods including plant-based components is a back-to-the-future trend.
When Sainsbury’s opened in 1869 the British diet was more diverse than today, incorporating many plants but was simplified during World War II for rationing, only to now start a resurgence in variety and depth.
The other major trend picked to 2025 is the explosive growth in alternative proteins, expected to be up by 25% by 2025, from US$4.2 billion in 2016.
Products recently taken up by Sainsbury’s include jackfruit, a member of the fig family commonly grown in tropical regions.
The heavy yielding tree produces a fruit with a meat-like texture and its higher protein content means it is becoming popular as a non-meat alternative.
The report highlights the food security risk of relying on four key plant sources for two-thirds of plant-based food globally.
Research body Crops for the Future has been formed to focus on underused food crops, including little known plants like kedondong and moringa.
New Zealand farmers Jacqui and Dan Cottrell have spearheaded a foray into cropping quinoa, an ancient grain they saw growing in Peru in similar terrain to their Taihape property.
Algae are also expected to become a more common food source, with Sainsbury’s already marketing a line of free-range hens fed on an algae-rich diet producing high Omega-3 eggs.
The other area expected to grow strongly by 2025 is the food-as-medicine category.
Sainsbury’s has identified a conflict in consumers’ minds between interest in functional food with perceived health benefits and growing mistrust of health advice.
It is finding greater incorporation of diets into consumers’ healthcare habits and is already offering bio-fortified foods with potential health benefits.
They include super-salmon fed a bespoke diet to contain greater levels of Omega-3 fatty acids while super mushrooms deliver 100% of Vitamin D and B12 needs.
Nuffield Scholar Andy Elliot completed his work this year on NZ’s need to position its food products beyond grass-fed with more emphasis on proven, discernible health benefits in those products.
The upswing to vegetarianism and flexitarianism will be a big shift for NZ to adjust to and exporters need to spend more time in the market to understand it and the changes.
His concern is the environmental and social pressure such changes are bringing is largely being exerted on farmers but forcing costs on producers will only cripple NZ’s ability to become more agile in markets facing such major changes.
He cited a lack of leadership, strategy and vision in the sector to create high-value extracts and products from existing production.
“NZ needs to work out how to create two to three times the value from 75% of what we already produce.”
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Read the report here
