Abstract:
At a time where the amount of food produced worldwide is
sufficient to feed all, the number of food-insecure people remains high.
This article presents an analysis of a number of futures studies on food
and agriculture, at both local and global scale, and using quantitative and
qualitative methods, with a specific focus on how they frame and address
food security. After identifying future key drivers of change, implications
for food security are discussed. The results show that futures studies in
agriculture are entering into a third generation where key drivers of change
include social and political forces as potential sources of discontinuities. It is
proposed to move the field of futures studies from the exploration of food
security to the exploration of food insecurity, whose multiple roots are
anchored in social, political, economic and institutional dimensions, and to
focus these future studies on ruptures and discontinuities rather than trends.
