This policy brief synthesises the outcomes of all ten thematic foresight pilot workshops of the Eye of Europe project (2024–2026), which engaged more than 400 policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, citizens and foresight practitioners in Berlin, Bucharest, Madrid, Paris, Prague and Thessaloniki. Building on R&I Policy Brief No. 1, it draws a cross-cutting narrative from the full series. Asked how they perceived the future, participants most often described it as a roller coaster. The brief argues that the underlying problem is not speed as such but a loss of control over direction, and it calls for stepping off the roller coaster through collective transformation towards regenerative futures.

The brief identifies four focal areas for policy action: society, from individual wellness to collective wellbeing; fashion, from ultra-fast fashion to regenerative and immaterial value and identity; food, from efficiency and optimisation to regeneration and resilience; and governance, from reactive firefighting to anticipatory governance. For each area, it traces the shift from accelerated to regenerative paradigms, presents alternative strategies that emerged from the workshops, and sets out R&I policy implications at EU, Member State and regional levels.

Four cross-cutting implications follow for how Europe organises research and innovation: 

• rewarding systemic and interdisciplinary research; 
• treating citizen and stakeholder knowledge as a research input in its own right; 
• nurturing imagination and transformative ambition; 
• and recognising foresight as a European public good, a permanent capacity of ERA governance rather than a project-by-project activity. 

Investment should extend beyond technology to social, institutional and governance innovation, and be aligned vertically across EU, national and regional levels as well as horizontally across policy domains.

Supported by the European Union (EU), EIT Food is the world's largest food innovation community. Its mission is threefold: healthier lives through food, a net zero food system and a fair and resilient food system. Its Consumer Observatory is Europe's central hub for current and future consumer insights on agrifood topics. The general and consumer-specific trends, wild cards and weak signals identified by the Observatory provide the basis for this scenario work.

The work continues the 2024 exercise on futures of food consumption and the agrifood ecosystem in 2035 in Europe, this time with emphasis on technological advances, specifically on consumer acceptance of processed and functional food and of alternative proteins. In 2025, Insight Foresight Institute engaged the EIT Food community and a broader set of food and foresight experts in three online workshops. The participants made sense of how societal and consumer trends could interrelate, explored alternative scenarios of food consumption by 2035 and reflected on their implications for today's agrifood ecosystem and policy.

Scenarios are not predictions of the likely future, but they depict possible futures, even less likely ones. The narratives are written in the present tense, as if we were already in 2035. Two dimensions structured the work and ensured that each scenario was truly different:

• Acceptance of alternative proteins, covering both traditional alternative proteins for European markets (e.g. tofu, seitan, tempeh and molluscs) and novel ones (e.g. mycoprotein, cultivated meat, precision fermentation and insects).

• Acceptance of processed and functional food, which may be unhealthy or healthy, even highly functional with health benefits and tailored to individual needs.

Crossing the two dimensions gives four scenarios:

• Scenario 1: NATURAL AND LOCAL – Low in processing, low in alternatives

• Scenario 2: WHOLE-FOOD MOSAIC – Low in processing, high in alternatives

• Scenario 3: HIGH-TECH SAVOUR – High in processing, high in alternatives

• Scenario 4: CONVENIENT AND AFFORDABLE – High in processing, low in alternatives

This briefing paper presents four scenarios on the futures of food consumption and the agrifood ecosystem in Europe in 2035, prepared by Insight Foresight Institute for the EIT Food Consumer Observatory. The scenario work started from general and consumer-specific trends identified by the Observatory and was developed in a series of online expert workshops during the summer and autumn of 2024. Two dimensions structured the scenarios: emerging technological opportunities for new products and retail experiences, and (un)sustainable and (un)healthy consumer choices.

Each narrative is written in the present tense and portrays a day in 2035. Green and me describes a high-tech food ecosystem centred on personalised nutrition and sustainable choices, which pays little attention to inequality. Frugal and local describes a localised food sector driven by community values. Cost and control describes a decayed food ecosystem focused on industrial efficiency, and Highs and lows an unequal high-tech food ecosystem. Images generated with AI serve as artistic impressions of each scenario.

The paper closes with implications for today's decision-makers, among them guiding consumers towards One Health choices, mainstreaming precision nutrition, prioritising animal welfare, embracing soilless agriculture, empowering farmers and prosumer communities, managing high-tech risks and balancing global and local dynamics.

https://if-institute.org/futures-of-food-consumption-in-2035-in-europe-on-sustainability-health-and-technology

Food in European countries have become a societal, health and environment issue due to its impact on human health (non-communicable diseases linked to diets), environment and biodiversity (synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, changes in land use), and climate change (greenhouse gas emissions from livestock and cropping systems). Change of diets is an
important public policy goal in R&I and other policies for reasons of both health and sustainability. Yet, policy makers struggle to achieve changes as influencing such an intimate area of daily life is extremely sensitive. The workshop explored possible inroads together with a diverse group of citizens.

Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive and quantifiable information regarding the sustainability and resilience of environmentally friendly European Livestock Production Systems (ELPS). The Horizon-funded STEP UP Project addresses this gap and aims at giving policymakers clear information on the effects (both positive and negative) of raising animals and better farming methods throughout Europe. Part of this project aims to map foresight studies and identify the factors that influence scenarios (drivers) and the synergies and trade-offs between impacts in order to build scenario archetypes, as well as highlight possibly neglected drivers, impacts, or externalities. The result of this task informed the scenario building being currently carried out.

In this work, we conducted a meta-analysis of foresight studies considering the time horizon post-2020 - 2050, in which the possible futures of European livestock productions were described. The originality of the approach consisted in constructing ‘sets of possible futures’ based on existing foresight exercises and the extraction of key variables. The method is inspired by systematic reviews developed in particular in the biomedical and environmental sciences field and by the French research project ScenEnvi, which compared international environmental scenarios and aggregated them in “archetypal families” . The aim was to identify the different families of scenarios built by European politics, scientific and economic stakeholders involved in these foresight exercises, and to identify any externalities or impacts of livestock systems that were neglected in these studies.

Using a multiple correspondence analysis, our analysis resulted in seven families of scenarios:
1. “Economically successful intensive bet”;
2. “Intensification with limited success”;
3. “Sustainable technology and green growth for cattle”;
4. “Governance by an organised sector: between modernisation, labelling and management of environmental impacts”;
5. “Coexistence and segmentation”;
6. “Sustainable efficiency and protectionism”;
7. “(Much) less but better”.

The cross comparison of the seven scenario families reveals a clear gradient from deregulated, high output intensification (families 1–2) towards tightly regulated, socio ecological transitions (families 6–7), with families 3–5 occupying intermediate, hybrid positions.

Taken together, these scenarios portray a coherent narrative arc. Early families represent globalised, technology driven intensification with minimal societal oversight. Mid range families experiment with sustainable intensification and coexistence, balancing productivity with emergent ethical environmental norms. The final families embody a paradigmatic shift: strong public (and local) governance, eco centric regulation, reduced trade dependency, territorial re embedding of LPS and widespread adoption of agro ecological principles.

EIT Food Consumer Observatory is organising online workshops focusing on the consumer acceptance of functional and processed food and alternative proteins by 2035. The online workshops are organised on September 11 and 18, from 10 to 13 hours CET. This is an open invitation to participate. It is free, just write us to consider your participation and learn more about the process: info@if-institute.org

What to expect in the workshops:
Before the workshops: Read this brief background document to familiarise yourself with the approach and prepare for the workshops.
During the workshops: Discuss and participate by writing your comments via MS Teams chat and the Miro board sticky notes. Note that the workshops will be recorded to enable automated transcription in Teams.
After the workshops: The expert team will develop scenario narratives, which are presented and discussed further in another workshop on November 4th 10-13 CET, which allows the reflection of scenario implications for the current agrifood ecosystem. Finally, a policy brief will be published end of the year.

Last year, we did a similar process focusing on the future of new food products and experiences and One Health. More information here:
https://if-institute.org/futures-of-food-consumption-in-2035-in-europe-on-sustainability-health-and-technology 

Supported by the European Union (EU), EIT Food is the world’s largest food innovation community – its mission is three-fold aiming at healthier lives through food, a net zero food system and reducing risk for a fair and resilient food system. Its Consumer Observatory is Europe’s central hub for current and future consumer insights on agrifood topics. The observatory has identified general and consumer-specific trends and other driving forces, which were used as a starting point for this scenario work. During the summer and autumn 2024, Insight Foresight Institute organised online workshops to develop four alternative future scenarios and their implications to stakeholders.

Scenarios are not predictions of the likely future, but they depict possible futures. Exploring alternative scenarios helps to expand one’s own span of observation further towards the future, and to possible threats and opportunities that otherwise might not be in the immediate attention span, or just being excluded for being unlikely. While the scenarios often consist of a possible future state and the pathway from the present to that future, in this case, our narratives of the future (written in the present tense, as if we were already in the future) describe each a different day in 2035.

The work focuses on the futures of food consumption and the agrifood ecosystem in 2035 in Europe, specifically with regards to emerging technological opportunities for new products and retail experiences as well as to (un)sustainable and (un)healthy consumer choices. These dimensions provided a structure that ensured that each of the four scenarios was truly different:
• Scenario A: GREEN AND ME - A Day in European High-Tech Food Ecosystem in 2035
• Scenario B: FRUGAL AND LOCAL - A Day in European Localized Food Sector Driven by Community Values in 2035
• Scenario C: COST AND CONTROL - A Day in European Decayed Food Ecosystem Focused on Industrial Efficiency in 2035
• Scenario D: HIGHS AND LOWS - A Day in European Unequal High-Tech Food Ecosystem in 2035.
We conclude the paper by reflecting on the scenarios and their implications to decision-makers today.

4CF The Futures Literacy Company is a consultancy entirely focused on strategic foresight and long-term strategies. For nearly two decades, 4CF has been on the mission to help its clients prepare for an uncertain tomorrow. The Company has executed hundreds of projects for private companies, public institutions and international entities, including the European Commission and its agencies (EUDA, ENISA), FAO, UNFCCC, UNESCO, UNEP and UNDP. 4CF is at the forefront of global innovation, and actively contributes to the development of cutting-edge foresight tools, including 4CF HalnyX (Delphi platform), 4CF Sprawlr, 4CF FLEx.

The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. 

FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: 

• building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; 
• implementing the FOSTER Academy – including four Summer Schools – for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; 
• initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; 
• scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; 
• studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; 
• strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; 
• identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; 
• and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS.
  

To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated. 

Food systems require urgent and profound transformation to become sustainable, both in Europe and worldwide. Social innovation plays a pivotal role in transforming today’s food systems into ones that are economically and socially feasible, and sustainable within planetary boundaries.

The project Reimagining the Food System: scanning the horizon for emerging social innovations was conducted by the Foresight on Demand consortium between July - December 2021, on behalf of the European Environment Agency. It engaged in a systemic examination of emerging social innovations across the food chain, conducted using horizon scanning, a tool to detect early signs of potentially important developments. Thus, it offers insights into the experimentation taking place in alternative ways to produce, trade and consume food.

Project phases:

• The horizon-scanning combined web mining with a filtering and validation process, using machine learning and human evaluation. The exercise identified over 240 weak (or early) signals from a variety of news articles, blogs and grey literature published in English between 2017 and 2021. The signals were aggregated into 24 closely related subsets, with each cluster hinting at a potential emerging issue (see image below);

• Next, 21 representatives from civil society organisations, business, academia and government discussed these issues at a sense-making workshop in September 2021;
• Following the workshop, 10 emerging issues were prioritised for characterisation. The characterisation was based on desk research and 11 semi-structured interviews with experts in the field. The 10 selected emerging issues include developments in new foods, products, services, and business and governance models. These issues have often been enabled by existing technologies and new forms of local partnerships, involving a variety of engaged stakeholders. They vary in their degree of maturity and novelty: some are relatively new developments, while others lend new perspectives to known subjects. Moreover, some provide new combinations of existing elements, while others are niche practices beginning to filter into the mainstream:
  
  1. Agroecology: a way of producing food and living, a science and a movement for change
  2. Soulful soil: alternative methods for nutrient and pest management
  3. The power of many: community-supported agriculture networks and initiatives
  4. Food-growing cities: urban farming, integrated food policies and citizen involvement
  5. Muscle-up: alternative protein sources for human consumption
  6. Knowledge is power: ensuring traceability and informing consumers
  7. Reclaiming retail: (re)connecting farmers with consumers and businesses
  8. Procurement strategies supporting sustainable agricultural and fishing practices
  9. Menu for change: restaurants feed appetite for sustainability
  10. The gift that keeps on giving: upcycled foods and food into energy

Read the European Environment Agency's briefing building on key findings of the project: Reimagining the food system through social innovations — European Environment Agency (europa.eu)