Six years ago, I participated in a meeting in Boston on the future of food with experts from all disciplines, fields and interests, from research at Harvard or MIT to communication, gastronomy, education and business.
As is well known, in the United States the distance between ID and business is much shorter, so the dialogue was transversal, agile and enriching. Among others, I met the head of a company dedicated to the so-called vertical agriculture that operated indoor vegetable production centers. A tremendous snowfall prevented us from visiting one of them, with its LED-illuminated hydroponic cultivation trays superimposed on gigantic shelves, full of lettuce and fresh vegetables, inside an immense warehouse in an urban area. Even so, we talked for a long time and she told me how the system worked and her business model. Also why I did not see it viable in Spain at that time.
Last week a friend told me that she was looking for a company willing to bet on this type of exploitation in Barcelona. I told him that, in my opinion, it would hardly be interesting for a private investor, since profitability is complicated. Another thing is publicly financed initiatives, for exhibition, exploration or advertising purposes.
I remember that on another occasion, speaking with young engineers who were testing technological entrepreneurship in this field and seeking my opinion, I advised them to focus on crops with high added value or, otherwise, it would be difficult for them to achieve the necessary production efficiency. I'm sure they did well because I saw them very smart.
Let's see if I explain myself. I am certain that there are places or situations in which this technology will be of great help and opportunity, the space race or extreme climates for example. Investigating rigorously is always good when there is money to do it, it is therefore a question of managing resources fairly, unfortunately always finite.
You know almost nothing, but what you do know a little about, a lot if you'll allow me, is things to eat. For this reason, although I am not an expert in agricultural engineering, in other articles I have already expressed my doubts about the social, ecological and even economic profitability of filling our fields with solar panels to produce electricity that lights up lettuce in opaque urban spaces.
Nobody knows the future. But yes, while we can, we will satisfy our appetite because there is no alternative. In other words, there will always be a business opportunity in food (ask investment funds if not…). However, today we eat what we eat and tomorrow we will eat what we eat for many reasons, so we must consider many aspects when betting on or supporting a development, an investment or a line of business. Among them, the economic, social and environmental production costs, the degree of maturity of the necessary technology or the not always obvious logistics problems; but also the priorities, customs and preferences of consumers, so influenced by their situation, level of training, information and trends.
Those of us who in one way or another participate in the design of the food of the future must navigate with as much information as possible, before risking it by deciding the course. Thus, with no other interest than to explain to you how I read the map at all times, you can remember old articles in which I doubted the efficiency of certain commercial applications of 3D food printers in early stages of their development, if there could be immediate demand in Europe. insect protein for large human consumption (another thing is animal feed) or the commercial potential of the first versions of Soylent.
Obviously the map changes over time and with it our judgment must change because intelligence is the ability to adapt. Thus, my opinions about the help that the new generations of robots can provide went from a somewhat skeptical curiosity about expensive and inefficient prototypes to the conviction that their presence will soon be common in many restaurants, since the technology is already beginning to be mature. scaled and available at competitive price.
Other cases, on the other hand, have been love at first sight. My obsession with artificial intelligence and the conviction that it will completely transform our lives and our food dates back years and is not the recent result of the GPT Chat epiphany. I can prove it.
Don't worry, I will not dwell now on evaluating the new forms of vegetable or fungal protein, circular aquaculture, precision fermentation, algae or other initiatives that I believe are equally promising. Although in some some barriers such as sustainability, scalability, long-term food security guarantees or the generalized perception of this security have yet to be completely overcome.
But I wanted to tell you about an obviously simplistic impression, undoubtedly favored by the binary communicative language of social networks where only fans or haters tend to show up for any topic. The question is that with respect to the food economy of the future it seems that there are only two possible types of positioning, be it by consumers, professionals or heads of administrations with their departments.
Simplifying even more until prototyping them, on the one hand we would have the reactionaries; When they are responsible for primary production, processing, catering or retail companies, I am afraid that they are doomed to disappear, both in the case of small ones, no matter how well-intentioned, authentic or pure they are, because this is increasingly a jungle, whether we like it or not, that we don't like, like the big ones no matter how sure they feel like managers. There is no stopping history and the strongest never survive, only the best adapted.
On the other are the irresponsible innovators, those who uncritically embrace the latest of what they have learned, the furthest away or what seems most technological to them, compulsively. His naïve techno optimism also tends to condemn his companies since natural selection does not reward the new, but rather what best adapts to the environment.
Seeking adaptation is therefore the smartest thing to do. You have to know this food table cloth with a systemic understanding to dare to be a visionary because, although it does not attract so much attention, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
