The case for history in planning future food systems transformations

Policy makers worldwide are preparing for a future of increasing food insecurity. One of the strategic tools used to take action is foresight planning, a method that generates plausible future scenarios of food system transitions and potential levers for achieving desirable change. This article argues that in order to improve scenario-building processes and ensure inclusiveness, foresight planners need to make better use of historical data, methods and insights. Data on local and national food histories can improve the plausibility and richness of scenarios, while historical methodologies can augment the robustness of scenario planning. The article presents three case studies to demonstrate this. The deep history of cassava commercialization in southern Mozambique illuminates the unintended but harmful consequences of a failure to take the deep history of local foodways into account when planning for transformation. The history of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh demonstrates how recurring social and economic features and patterns affected vulnerability to food shortages, providing insights that can be used to construct plausible scenarios aimed at improving food security. The history of the development of a food system dependent on international markets in Little Ice Age Holland shows how experiences from a more distant era can help planners involved in the transformation of current-day food systems, specifically by factoring in complex interactions between humans and environments and their long-term consequences for vulnerability and resilience. The article concludes by pinpointing the types of historical data, methodologies, and initiatives valuable for building more robust and inclusive scenarios on food systems.