1. COVID-19: lessons on how the
agri-food system could change
Krijn Poppe (emeritus Wageningen UR)

2. • Observations
• Foresight techniques
• 4 Scenarios
• The transformative role of the EU Commission

3. COVID-19 and the food system: observations
 European food system has performed quite well, also thanks to open borders
 Declining sales in some markets: flowers (1e lock down), food-service and its suppliers (veal,
potato varieties for frites)
 Increasing sales in supermarkets, short supply chains.
 Mink were a Covid-19 risk: Dutch farms were definitely closed. More discussion on livestock near
urban centres to come.
 Role of pollution (fine particles)?
 Persons from lower economic classes with life style and food related problems (obesitas etc.)
overrepresented in Intensive Care Units of hospitals
 Spotlight on labour and housing conditions of migrant workers (slaughterhouse etc.)
 Working from home, more interest in living in the country side, rural tourism.
 Economic crisis: V, U, W, L, I, K shaped? Political consequences (populistic parties)

4. Resilience is defined as:
see: https://magazines.wur.nl/resilience-en/welcome/
 Capacity to bounce back to normal functioning after
perturbation
 Ability of a system to maintain specific functions in the face of
changes
 Robust / adaptive / transformative
 Capacity to tolerate disturbance without collapsing
 Capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and reorganize
while undergoing change in order to retain essentially the same
function, structure and feedback
 Capacity of a complex system to deal with change and continue
to develop
 The European Food System can be classified as resilient, but we
will see transformations.
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5. Foresights
 Current behaviour is driven by expectations of the future
 For example: market values = future utility
 The future is partly unknown, risky and uncertain
 Frank Knight (1921): risk can be measured, uncertainty not.
 Nassim Taleb: black swans
 Donald Rumsfeld: unknown unknowns
 Earlier studies have suggested that a pandemic is a real threat
 Foresight studies (‘futurology’) tries to deal with creating insights in the
future.
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6. Some foresight
techniques
 Trends and megatrends
 Horizon scans
 Delphi-studies
 Scenario thinking / planning
 Forecasting and backcasting
 Science fiction / visionairs
 Prototyping
 System modelling
 (Real options theory)
6
 Que sera, sera – no logic
 Endless world – no change
 Everything is a cycle – summer, winter, fall, spring
 Makeable world – we are in control
 Viva la revolution! – revolutions are useful
 The deluge is coming – disaster is around the corner
 Stabilise – stop growth, we need a new equilibrium
 Back to nature – ecology instead of the industrial
world
 Spiritual live – self realisation by meditation
 Machines take over from the human – we are
unnecessary
10 archtypes of future stories (Jim
Dator)

7. Institutional economics: regulating mechanisms
7
Culture (religion,
customs, norms)
Formal rules
(laws)
Governance
(contracts, market
organisation)
Resource
allocation
(incentives, outcomes)
Formal rules
(laws)
Culture (religion,
customs, norms)
Governance
(contracts, market
organisation)
Resource
allocation
(incentives, outcomes)
© Williamson, 2000

8. Unchanged
Unchanged
Larger
Healthier and
more sustainable
Role of the State
Behaviour
Business
as Usual
Government
Control
Regional
Communities
Green
High Tech
Transformation

9. Regional Communities
9
 Revival of the country side:
 Remote working and living in the country side (100
km city circle?)
 More demand for local food, short supply chains
 Demand for healthy food
 Cooperative arrangements like community
supported agriculture, platform economy
 More tourism into the regional country side
 Multi-functional farms will benefit
 Neo-liberal income distribution stays, rich are
better off than the poor

10. Government control
10
 Food policy: Government more active in health and
food, preventive health. Health apps.
 Food recipes manufacturing (salt etc)
 Food environment (what can be sold where)
 Food prices (sugar tax, low VAT on fruit&veg)
 Health issues in the livestock industry:
 Working and housing conditions factories
 Air quality in areas with intensive livestock
 Zoonosis, more zoning restrictions
• More room for state intervention in general (neo-liberal policies have run their course)
• The Covid-19 social experiment learns that governments can change behaviour and you not only
have to rely on technology with a profitable business case.

11. Green Hightech Transformation
 Green Deal: a 1950s-like Wirtschaftwunder that transforms the society (and economy)
 Modernise with new techniques (ICT, robots, crispr-cas) to solve climate and biodiversity challenges
(farm to fork). 5G investments
 Classify farmers on their level of sustainability and let the greenest survive.
 EU creates institutional environment for data management by farmers: digital dashboard
 Extend VAT-reporting by farmers with a sustainability report (Key Performance Indicators) + plan
 Farm certification, includes report and plan (link with AKIS)
 Report can be used in labels (private, HVE in France etc) and EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy
 Classify farmers on sustainability basis as red/orange/yellow/light-green/dark-green (nutriscore)
 An obligation for food companies to substitute digital invoices for paper (like UBL in Hungary) helps
 Independent Data Storage (locker) for farmers, data sharing (IoF2020 policy recommendations)
 EU promotes green farming over red/orange. Eco-schemes; Oblige dairy factories and
slaughterhouse to buy 25% from light and dark green farms at higher prices (like in the petrol
market) ? [PS this is more than only organics on a voluntary basis as in F2F]
 Use instruments as ETS (or carbon credits) to deal with climate change. At € 60.- /ton CO2 the
market can solve many issues with Dutch peat soils. Tradable quota for emissions

12. Green High Tech Transformation: institutions needed for a
Food System approach
Price
Quantity
Demand
Supply
Current
price
Export to
feed 10 bln
Less waste
Less animal protein
More sustainable
(Digital) knowledge / Precision
Agriculture
Less
chemicals
Social policy for food insecure
persons: not a price but an
income problem
Current volume
Create market like
in energy, mobility
Organise platform
economy

13. Unchanged
Unchanged
Larger
Healthier and
more sustainable
Role of the State
Behaviour
Business
as Usual
Government
Control
Regional
Communities
Green
High Tech
Transformation
Scenarios
are not
predictions

14. krijn.poppe@wur.nl
www.wur.nl
kjpoppe@hccnet.nl
Thank you
for your
interest
See paper in EuroChoices (open access):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1746-692X.12276