Using the Futures Triangle to Infer Images of the Future of Food and Agriculture in the Southern Cone: The Case of Argentina

Abstract

The different perceptions of food and agriculture stakeholders about the future is a key input to design future-oriented public policies and to build a shared vision of the future. By applying the futures triangle to the results of a qualitative study concerning the future of food and agriculture innovation system in Argentine, five archetypes of images of the future were inferred. The archetypes reflect a distinct combination between the weight of history, the pushes of the present and the pulls of the future, corresponding to the perception of the future of nine distinct stakeholders of the food and agriculture system in Argentine. The archetypes are named: stuck in the present, the future is not ours, the future never comes, the future is being built and the future is ours. The analysis show that the stakeholders can envision the future of the world’s agriculture with a certain degree of creativity. However, they find it difficult to imagine the future of the Argentine agricultural industry in new ways: they repeat the old ideas or notions they have about it. All those visions lead to a demand for changes that are more connected to the present than to the future. This foresight study offers a first approach to explore the different views regarding the future of food and agriculture and it reveals how such views influence the type and characteristics of the new stakeholders demands to the public agriculture sector in Argentina to the year 2030.