1

Introduction

On August 7–8, 2019, the Food Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a public workshop in Washington, DC, to review the status of current and emerging knowledge about innovations for modern food systems and strategies for meeting future needs. As described by Food Forum chair Sylvia Rowe, SR Strategy, LLC, in her opening remarks, the Food Forum comprises diverse members from academia, government, the private sector, and civil society, and has the goal of achieving concordance around timely, relevance, and often controversial issues. She explained that the workshop would address different perspectives on the topic of food systems and would build on a workshop on the topic of sustainable diets hosted by the Food Forum in August 2018.

The workshop explored new consumer demands related to high-quality, nutritious, and sustainable foods, along with policy and marketplace strategies in response to such demands. The 1.5-day workshop included an opening session that provided a broad look at food systems (Chapter 2), case studies in food system evolution from the federal government and the private sector (Chapter 7), and a closing discussion (Chapter 10). The remainder of the workshop was organized into six sessions focused on innovations and their implications for food systems in the areas of (1) food production, processing, and packaging (Chapter 3); (2) alternative food production (Chapter 4); (3) food distribution (Chapter 5); (4) food marketing and food value chains (Chapter 6); (5) food data and analytics

(Chapter 8); and (6) food access and affordability (Chapter 9). The Statement of Task for the workshop is provided in Box 1-1.¹

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¹ The workshop planning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop, and this Proceedings of a Workshop was prepared by an independent rapporteur as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are those of independent presenters and participants, and are not necessarily endorsed of verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, nor should they be construed as reflecting any group consensus.