Breadcrumbs
Scenario building the food supply towards 2050
28 November 2011On 16 November, the Flagship project ‘Climate change mitigation and adaptation in the UK food system’, led by Alice Bows, held its third and final stakeholder workshop. Twenty-four stakeholders from across the food supply chain joined the research team in London to explore alternative pathways towards scenarios for 2050. The research team developed five detailed scenarios through an ongoing process of stakeholder engagement and analysis in order to explore the climate change mitigation and adaptation implications of possible future developments in the food and agriculture system.
Each scenario is presented as a narrative describing its key features and is underpinned by a quantitative analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 and non-CO2) associated with delivering the scenario. Named after meals that might typically feature in the scenarios, each scenario describes how food is produced (from farm to plate) and consumed in 2050, how this is impacted by the effects of climate change and how the practises described affect mitigation efforts.
For example, in “Chicken Tikka Masala” they explored a future in which the UK continues to enjoy interesting and varied diets by moving much of the UK’s agricultural production to indoor controlled environments which protect against the worst effects of climate change. At this final workshop participants, drawn from across academic, retail, farming, production and policy communities to support a ‘backcasting process’, worked with the scenario narratives to expand the scenarios and develop pathways through which they might evolve from the present day.
As the team moves into the final stages of the project, they will begin the process of incorporating the scenario narratives and the underlying calculations into the communication of their research findings.