The Center for Food Integrity and United Soybean Board Highlight Strategies to Build Trust in Ag Technology
Exciting new ag technologies are emerging to help address some of the most significant challenges for today’s food system – unprecedented food inflation, supply chain disruptions, animal welfare concerns and climate change. Technology breakthroughs could help reduce impacts on the environment, alleviate animal disease and suffering, cut food waste, enable crops to withstand weather extremes, improve the health and quality of foods, and make farming more sustainable.
For these innovations to reach the market and be successful, they must be accepted by consumers.
Why do consumers accept some ag and food technologies and reject others? We’ve worked to answer that question, through recent consumer and food company research by The Center for Food Integrity (CFI) and the United Soybean Board (USB).
The findings identify specific audiences most accepting of technology and indicate specific strategies most likely to earn trust in new and emerging technologies.
“One of the biggest challenges historically to introducing technology in food and agriculture has been a lack of ‘felt need’ by society. Consumers have believed that we have what we need, and new technology in food production offers little societal benefit,” said Charlie Arnot, CEO of The Center for Food Integrity. “But today, our food supply is facing unprecedented pressure. Felt need is now increasing among regulators, policymakers and food system stakeholders trying to address unprecedented food inflation, meet climate commitments and secure more reliable supply chains. The market is ripe for new technologies that can help solve some of these larger challenges.”
CFI surveyed consumers and interviewed a broad spectrum of food leaders to determine the specific factors that increase acceptance – or rejection – of new technologies in food and agriculture. Based on those findings, CFI developed a strategic roadmap for the food system with specific recommendations for each sector of the food system, including technology developers, agriculture producers, food retailers and foodservice, CPG companies, research institutions and NGOs.
“We have developed a roadmap with strategic steps that can be used to build trust in agriculture technology. These approaches are useful for organizations of any size, as well as individuals,” Arnot said. “The approaches can be applied to various types of technology in food and agriculture, such as synthetic biology, precision agriculture, gene editing and even emerging technologies still in development.”
In addition, CFI created a communication guide outlining trust-building strategies and conversation starters to engage with consumers about food and ag technology.
The research findings and strategic roadmap will be presented in a series of webinars in September. Each webinar will provide tailored recommendations for specific sectors of the food system.
- 10 a.m. CT Sept. 15 Building Trust in Ag Tech: Farm Focus
- 10 a.m. CT Sept. 20 Building Trust in Ag Tech: Innovator Focus
- 10 a.m. CT Sept. 21 Building Trust in Ag Tech: Food Focus
Attendees are invited to register for one, two or all three events.
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