Is it Time to Rethink How We Save the Food System?

Some notes from the front line of supply chain accountability at Innovation Forum’s Future of Food and Beverage event, May 13-14 2025, Amsterdam

200 plus passionate professionals in charge of leading the sustainability initiatives of multi-billion euro businesses across Europe should be a pretty good place to take a reading of the health of the food system. Surrounded by serious conversations on scaling regenerative agriculture, the challenges of science-based targets and the complexities of supply chain data, a niggling metaphor surfaced in my mind: the food system is the Titanic.

We know that ship was massive and technologically impressive. Complex, global, and too big to fail. Just like the food system. Yet despite consensus on the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the precarious state of farm businesses, we continue at full speed towards what science can see coming. Fixed on legacy business models and legitimised by consumer choice, we can all see the ecological and social iceberg ahead, yet seem incapable of changing course.

Much of the conversation in Amsterdam has focused on the benefits of converting farmers to regenerative agriculture. But in the Titanic analogy, I feel this is upgrading the engine room to cleaner fuel without changing the trajectory of the ship. Major food brands across the whole spectrum are universal in their calls for regenerative agriculture, but this will not save the food system on its own. 

In my admittedly depressing analogy, farmers are the engine room crew: essential, overworked, and under-consulted. We’re being directed to adopt new practices, gather more data, and bear more risk, while the broader system sails on unchanged—still driven by extractive procurement, just-in-time logistics, and short-term shareholder returns.

This is not to dismiss the value of regenerative farming—far from it. But unless we also change course, we’re doing a stock take while the hull takes on water.

The conference was not without enthusiasm. So I want a more optimistic metaphor to encapuslate the collaborative and talented crowd of sustainability marketers, analysts and innovators, all doing their best to do their bit. 

Enter Apollo 13.

The failed 1970 NASA mission wasn’t defined by its original objective, but by its response to crisis. When an oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon, it forced mission control and the crew to abandon their goals, improvise solutions, and collaborate in real-time to bring everyone home alive.

Apollo 13 is a story of humility, adaptation, and systems thinking under pressure. It’s a reminder that technological ambition, when divorced from ecological and human limits, can lead to disaster—but also that intelligent, coordinated response can still save the mission.

And here’s the key: technology has enabled the intensification of the food system and helped get us into this crisis, but it can also help get us out. Not through silver bullets or moonshots, but by being reoriented to serve people and the planet, not just profit and scale.

At the Innovation Forum event, it was deeply encouraging to see corporate conversations beginning to shift. Climate resilience and diet diversity were hot topics, and it was clear that that the locus of sustainability effort has moved on from evidence-based marketing and data-driven compliance, and into core operating strategy. The most progressive businesses have disbanded sustainability departments into procurement divisions, or even embedded farmers within business strategy.

What if farmers were on the bridge, not just below deck?

I hosted a panel featuring a coffee producer which was farmer-owned and had embedded farmers in its governance structures. It was clear that this isn’t charity—it’s smart business. When farmers are co-pilots, the system becomes more resilient, responsive, and regenerative by design. Another leading example was from a palm oil producer who had dealt with the complexities of commodity sourcing through empowering farmers, local agencies and regional governments to deliver landscape-wide economic, environmental and social regeneration in its sourcing areas. Through trusting farmers and local communities to drive initiatives at local level, every part of the supply chain won. 

Back on the Titanic, decisions were made by elites far removed from the realities of those below deck. On Apollo 13, every voice counted, and every part of the system—from engineers to astronauts—had to work together, adapt quickly, and innovate within real constraints. That’s the mindset we need now.  

The collision facing the food system is real and imminent. Managing increasing extremes is the new normal for farmers across the planet, meaning that the urgent and important activity is finding resilience. Farmers know their farms best, but need support from their customers and advisors to break down the technological insights and very real financial barriers to change. 

At Soil Association Exchange, we believe in moving beyond metrics for the sake of metrics. We’re building tools and relationships that help farmers, businesses, and supply chains work together to measure what matters—soil health, biodiversity, livelihoods—and act on it. Data with decision-making power is key - the data is on farm and farmer-owned, powering resilience and opportunity for Exchange benchmarked farms.

The future of food doesn’t need to be a tragedy. I left Amsterdam with a renewed ambition to harness the collective power and talent of our industry to make this a true comeback story.