Ready for the insect burger? A talk with Prof. Bodo Steiner
Sustainable and sustainability have become two buzzwords, but it is not fully understood, especially when the topic is “sustainable food”. Some people would most likely translate “sustainable food” into eating local, while others understand this by becoming vegan.
Bodo Steiner, Professor of Food Economics & Business Management at the University of Helsinki and one of the speakers at Future Summit 2021, talked about investments and innovation, futures and scenarios, and accurate explanations to better understand the “sustainable food” universe.
Prof. Bodo Steiner is Head of the research group Management & Organizations For Sustainable Food Systems, Deputy director at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki, and Coordinator of MATS, a research and innovation action project, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. He is affiliated with the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies (URBARIA), the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ), the InterTran Research Group for Sustainable Law and Business at the University of Helsinki (INTERTRAN), the Sustainable Change Research Network (SUCH) the Finnish Organic Research Institute, the Task Force of the Finnish National Food Research Strategy, and serves as advisory board member for the Institute for the Economy for the Common Good, and as member to the Environmental Footprint Technical Advisory Board of the European Commission.
“The fact that it creates a buzz is in itself important and it’s good. Think of Cop26, think of the real issue: food is contributing to about 25% global greenhouse gas emissions and we need to make an impact on the chain” said Prof. Bobo Steiner, who also explained the importance of engaging as many people as possible, especially youngsters, in a discussion related to sustainability. Because everybody will take its part in this transition, and the more familiar this notion becomes, the better.
Talking about food futures, Prof. Steiner pointed out some scenarios, transition pathways, explaining why we should think beyond the blue planet and about the future of food on Mars, the lab-based food future, the urban farming, alternative networks and the non-meat future.
Having business professionals focusing on circular business models for sustainable urban food systems is not enough, believes Prof. Steiner, because the focus and talk should be on innovations that help the connection of practical ways to policy ways. Prof. Bodo Steiner explained why “sustainability reporting has not delivered impact in terms of sustainability”. In his opinion, the Global Reporting Initiative hasn't actually helped to curb global emissions and he believes “we need more transparency regulation on counter-productive innovation factors, hence innovation inhibitors put a foot in front of the sustainability transition door.”
The EU PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) will help consumers to make better choices when buying products in terms of environmental footprint, through transparency. Being able to benchmark a given product and relate it to the production methods with respect to climate change, helps: “When we think of food futures, we need to much better connect social and environmental sustainability.” Also, Prof. Bodo Steiner's suggestion is to improve food waste knowledge networks, as part of waste management strategies, provide more balanced knowledge exchange and induce greater diversity. He believes we need more proactive governments because, sometimes, the governments have contradictory policies, which are counterproductive innovation factors. “How to increase sustainability in the Finish wine supply chain?” is the first study to analyze the environmental sustainability aspect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a global wine supply chain perspective, a study conducted by Bodo Steiner, Helena J. Ponstein, and Stefano Ghinoi and released in 2019.
Who would be ready to bite into the insect burger?
Insect food is not common in Europe, but globally we have more than 2 billion people consuming insects or insect diets. The first insect-based bread made in Europe was in Finland in 2017, and it was made from flour ground dried crickets and wheat flour and seed and contained more protein than regular wheat bread. ”We need to change our mindset - changing our minds and changing the mental models at the individual consumer level, at the organization or the network level, for being prepared for that future food system. We really need to discuss and reassess our values, what values we want, without polarized debate.”
Insect protein could help reduce global warming associated with food consumption in Europe, according to the study published by researchers at the University of Helsinki and LUT University, Finland. Prof. Bodo Steiner believes that scientists can have an important role by providing key information for food safety regulation and also “businesses can push the regulator in a meaningful way to move forward”.
The global food system is very unsustainable, from planting, to growing and to the end of product. There are leverage points where changes would lead to big positive impact: “We have to do it sequentially. Just think of methane, beyond CO2 in the context of production: global beef production contributes to about 6% of greenhouse gas emissions, in contrast to aviation globally, which is 3%.” The society has the role to express its values, its preferences, that can change mental models, express it to the policymakers and push them into action. “We can debate endlessly, academically, about what exactly is sustainability. But we need to have an informed debate and say to the youngsters: you express your preferences.” The hypothetical scenarios, conjoint analysis, choice experiments, etc, has its important value, but in the end, when people go to the supermarket, there might be a difference in actual preferences, concluded Prof. Steiner.
Shifting from growing less animal into more plant-based food for plant-based protein brings a sensitive and complex situation, as Prof. Bodo Steiner emphasized in the conversation at Future Summit. How to avoid the use of a greater land for food production that might get in conflict with the Amazon indigenous people? There may be other factors creating potential problems, there may be potential external effects that no one thinks about when cutting down on beef consumption and planting more green. When talking about the negative impact of plant food and analyzing the unsustainability of plant-based food needs “a very informed debate’. Having a diversity of sciences onboard to really see and project scenarios and predict critical situations is essential in the opinion of Prof. Bodo Steiner.