Researchers are following a number of approaches to re-engineer the mechanisms of food production. One involves incorporating automation, artificial intelligence and other novel technologies into traditional forms of agriculture.³¹ For example, tools like deep learning can accurately identify the presence of weeds and signs of disease from drone footage, enabling targeted intervention³² and decreasing unnecessary pesticide use.³³ Similarly, engineered plant nanosensors and portable Raman spectroscopy could potentially detect stresses and track the health of crops and soil.³⁴

Future Horizons:

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5-yearhorizon

Research improves new approaches to farming

Studies of the economics of vertical farming identify the key chokepoints currently limiting the technology. Improved characterisation of biochemical interactions between plants enables rational design of mixed-cropping systems. Nanotech sensors monitor crop plants for stressors and other key variables. Biomass fermentation is used to enhance nutritional value of plant-based foods and improve taste and texture.

10-yearhorizon

Farming technologies create new processes for food production

Cultured meat reaches price parity with conventionally-produced meat via precision fermentation of micro and macro nutrients that help reproduce conventional texture and mouthfeel. Technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things radically improve farming practices.

25-yearhorizon

Nanotech and biotech provide foundation for efficient farming

Widespread use of nanotechnology delivery systems for pesticides and other interventions see widespread use. Biofertilisers replace chemical fertilisers in many countries. Farmers have access to predictive analytics, which guide all practices, as well as seeds and products designed specifically for their own complex systems. Cultivated meat is available in structured forms, such as steaks. Reduced cost of producing highly nutritious and palatable fermented products and cultivated meat means that traditionally undernourished communities are better fed.

Such high-tech approaches to traditional farming can be complemented by the use of agro-ecological tools,³⁵ such as microbe-based bespoke fertilisers,³⁶ evidence-based crop choice and rotations.

Precision fermentation with engineered micro-organisms can provide nutrient sources and improvers for food products such as cultured meat, improving texture and palatability and helping move towards viable large-scale production.³⁷ Microbes and enzymes are already being used as factories that produce fats and proteins for nutrition products.³⁸

The controlled release and targeted delivery of fertiliser ingredients manufactured at the nanoscale may also improve sustainability by ensuring more efficient use of nutrients.³⁹ Combining these approaches with “climate-smart agriculture”, an acknowledgement of the need to take changing climatic conditions and their increasing variability into account,⁴⁰ will be especially important in developing economies where farms often lack resilience.⁴¹

Vertical farming, in which crops are grown indoors, close to population centres, under artificial light, could have a number of significant benefits. These include reduced food miles, reduced water use (watering systems are closed) and cuts in chemical pollution from fertilisers.⁴² Making vertical farming economically viable remains challenging, however.⁴³

Reimagining farming - Anticipation Scores

The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:

The uncertainty related to future science breakthroughs in the field
The transformative effect anticipated breakthroughs may have on research and society
The scope for action in the present in relation to anticipated breakthroughs.

This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.