The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that convenes extraordinary people to address the most important questions facing science and humanity. CIFAR engaged Creative Futures to support the facilitation of a Discovery Panel held July 2024 to explore the futures of food.

Approach:

• CIFAR invited global researchers to attend a three day Future of Food Discovery Panel to explore the topic, understand what opportunities and challenges might arise in the future, and to generate a broad range of possibilities that could be explored further.

• Creative Futures designed and facilitated Day 1 of the discovery panel, incorporating strategic foresight methodology.

• As part of the design of the Discovery Panel, Creative Futures built upon prior discussions to identify critical changes impacting the futures of food, explored how those critical changes might present in 2050, and then participants worked in small groups to imagine possible futures of food in 2050, such as what people are eating, how food is produced, who is involved, dominant food policies, and new traditions and values related to food.

• The exploratory discussions as part of Day 1 were carried forward into Day 2 and 3 in order to inform the summary report.

Results:

The conversations and discussions held by the Discovery Panel are being analyzed and synthesized into a summary report. The summary report will inform any actions that CIFAR might take in relation to the future of food as part of its overall research agenda.