Inevitable COVID-19: Food learnings

Swiss consumer preferences are evolving rapidly as many products and raw materials used in our modern food industry are, due to partially closed borders, less air traffic and less harvest workers, not available as they might have been, in these unprecedented times. Additionally preferences are changing due to the influence of COVID as consumers attach importance, to more safe and healthy food. This automatically drives us more and more towards regional and local products which will hopefully have a positive impact on our Swiss Food Miles.

With Switzerland being the country with the highest import of food products in Europe, this change could have a positive impact on the general sustainable approach in our country.

With this background and knowing that local foods are becoming more fashionable, which other food learning will or should evolve as well in this COVID-19 era.

COVIDS’s impact on the food system

With the already existing trend to fresh and health conscious home cooking, the COVID impact has added even more learning towards this growing demand for fresh, healthy, additive-free and regional products and is having the society focussing on rethinking the future of their, of all our food.

This learning could even support a future where there is enough healthy food for all of our growing population on our planet and it could help us to reduce hunger, malnutrition and obesity. Thinking and going forward this way we can change the production and consumption of our planetary food industry accordingly.

Taking this knowledge and the momentary situation into consideration, all businesses in our food industry, from farmers to processors to producers to suppliers to retailers up to restaurants and consumers we are all challenged to change this situation and should use it for new opportunities.

The key to taking the right action and overcoming these challenges is that we have to rethink our food system, knowing what the negative influences are and changing these for the better, by taking responsibility and being an example. Many inspiring ideas, initiatives and movements are already underway and becoming the new learning for the future.

There are already many lifestyles, trends and learnings visible in our daily food choices, as for example switching towards alternative proteins instead of animal proteins, this has an immense impact on the healthiness of humans and our planet. Other food choices focus on adapting the nutritional needs of children, elderly, athletes, physical workers or intellectual workers. All these learnings we call personalized nutrition

Personalized Nutrition and produce have also supported many people with pre-existing health conditions during these COVID times, by making more informed choices and eating more healthy diets which will hopefully evolve into more new food habits and trends.

Another visible learning is the focus on the production and supply of safe and healthy food that doesn’t exhaust our planet's resources and pollutes the environment. The focus of this learning is definitely regionality and it also addresses all challenges we have with food safety and the changing climate, focusing on soil health and biodiversity. In other words climate smart farming with focus on water conservation and carbon neutrality. A learning that can very easily be adapted and can be pushed in the right direction from all consumers by just buying more local, regional and organic.

Together with this learning automatically comes a trend towards another big challenge of our society called food waste, then at the moment over 30 % of our food production ends up as waste. With more sustainable production, buying local, and reducing our food waste we should be able to feed all people on our planet without increasing production volumes.

Unfortunately due to our massive food production and so many food businesses still being in a lockdown area, we are wasting much more food during this COVID-19 period and food waste is even on an all time high. And still.... we are having plenty to eat, this really makes you wonder where this all went wrong, and what we can learn from this.

Also with an increasing productivity improvement because of use of digital farming, our food production globally is much higher then our consumption, and with customers demands and desires for perfect “insta” food, we need a wake up and we need to realise that this is the wrong approach. Yearly tons and tons of food are wasted because they don't have the right looks or sizes, and thinking about the amount of energy, soil and water used to produce these foods to then be wasted is flabbergasting.

COVID-19 now provides us the momentum for more food ecosystem collaboration between producers and consumers, as the pandemic in some areas of the globe is resulting in food shortage, higher food prices and the inability to fulfill consumers demands.

To become fit for the future of our food and the food industry, we all have to be ready, willing to change and react much faster without looking for excuses but just by doing. There are enough learnings and opportunities, of course it will take time, but with the knowledge that COVID-19 will be around for another approximately 12 to 18 months we should use this time as a wake up call, and start creating a better future for us all.