Step 2: Depending on the purpose of the foresight work, various foresight techniques can be used to ‹plan for the future›. [This figure] describes the development of participatory scenarios, which can help to understand key uncertainties the food system might be facing together with various drivers of change. This analysis allows for the construction of a set of plausible futures/scenarios that can describe various possibilities of how the current status of the food system could change and what this might mean for different actors in the system and for achieving a new mix of food system outcomes. The scenarios can then also be analysed specifically for the differing sets of trade-offs between food system outcomes that the different future configurations of the food system might entail. As any change to the system will be beneficial for some but might bring negative consequences for others, this analysis is particularly important as it allows us to then think about how to deal with/compensate actors losing out in the food system transformation process.

Working with the food system concept