Future trends: The consumer of the future

There have been large changes over the last 100 years in food choices and demand characteristics. Most of these changes have been slow and relatively predictable, until now. More recent changes are kick-starting a revolution that will see demand characteristics change markedly, and rebalance the power toward the consumer. It will be more important than ever to be genuinely consumer driven in product development, and to understand these changes when deciding what to grow, produce and then how to market foods. This talk will briefly review the history of food choices and lead into a discussion of findings from multiple experiments and surveys over the last 12 years to predict the demand characteristics for grains over the next 10 years and beyond. The overview nature of this presentation will set the scene for the more specific talks that follow in this session – Future Trends.