What Are Current And Future Challenges Of The Food Industry?

By Melissa Lind, contributing writer

A recently released food industry research panel, conducted amongst Canadian executives last June, compares North American food industry responses to those of European counterparts.  Across the board, food-industry professionals continue to rank profit, customer satisfaction, and food safety as the industry’s top goals. However, concerns of the environment are gaining traction.

The report shows that nearly 70 percent of the executives surveyed believe environmental goals also belong at the top of the list, with sustainability being a primary concern. Similar surveys conducted amongst European food industry participants indicate that 64 percent of those operatives already consider themselves to be conscious of sustainability measures in the food-supply chain.

Despite this general agreement, there are significant regional differences regarding transparency, recycling, and bio-matters.  In recent years, most of the industry’s largest players have focused efforts on raw ingredient procurement in terms of sustainability and fair practice. Still, emerging concerns, including total carbon footprint, are taking a larger role to align with global concerns.

Many food producers, including multi-national companies, are focusing a greater effort into support of local farming practices with consultation on issues such as crop rotation, fertilization, chemical use, seed selection, and handling of crops with some support of microloan programs to increase sustainability measures. These efforts fit in well with global priorities and mainstream goals of reduced greenhouse emissions and packaging reduction.  Much of the effort is being focused in commodity crops used worldwide, such as cocoa, palm oils, coffee, and other produce from areas with lower levels of modernization.

The report also identifies key issues with similarities and differences amongst regional and demographic groups. Topics at hand include:

Consumers rank waste in packaging as a top issue. Food industry executives find reusable packaging as a lesser concern, but state they have taken steps to reduce packaging.

Both consumer and industry participants are concerned about energy waste. Food executives are focusing on reducing carbon emissions and water pollution.

Industry participants state they do not consider organic labeling to be a large of a concern in future issue. However, they have taken steps to source products locally and utilize more natural ingredients

Finally, biodiversity through partnership with local farmers and micro-financing top activities for sustainability is listed as a key issue.

Other industry concerns include:

• Water Waste
• Supply-Chain Transparency
• Employee Satisfaction

The food industry has clearly identified the need to align concerns with larger global issues and is facing increased pressure to do so.  As the food supply continues to expand both in terms of consumer demand for more exotic and distantly sourced food products, as well as demand caused by an expanding population, solutions will require innovative strategies.

The world population currently demands daily supply of about 360 million tons of both carbohydrates and protein, along with nearly 200 million tons of fat. This is expected to increase nearly 40 percent by 2030 as the global population continues to grow. The June 2014 report concludes that most of the efforts taken by the food industry thus far have been focused on raw ingredient procurement and energy costs, but those challenges of bio-mass waste and biodiversity issues will be a major challenge going forward.