368 Farm Ln
East Lansing, MI 48823
USA
Professor Paul B. Thompson, W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics, Departments of Philosophy, Community Sustainability and Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University
Four Archetypes for Future Food Systems
This paper sketches four archetypal characterizations of how food will be produced, processed, distributed and consumed over the coming half century—a time in which all manner of social association will be influenced by climate change, growing scarcity of resources relative to human population and climate change. The archetypes are offered as scenarios that facilitate advance thinking at the level of total food systems, and are not represented as exhausting all the forces and possible adaptations that are relevant. They are intended to provoke a critical attitude toward certain presumptions that may be widely shared, especially among advocates of alternative food systems. The analysis places special emphasis on how each scenario reflects and incorporates a response to environmental sustainability and to food justice.