“FOR I DIPT INTO THE FUTURE …”: AN ANALYSIS OF MEDIA PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE NORTH AMERICAN FOODSCAPE, 2000–2023

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines changing predictions made between 2000 and 2023 in a selection of newspapers and magazines concerning the future of the North American foodscape. The first section reviews existing literature, especially that by John Urry (2016) on the study of the future and explores Warren Belasco’s 2006 discussion about how reports of the future of food have changed over time. The second section, on methodology, describes how surveys of articles that included the keywords “future food” published in The New York Times, The Economist, Time Magazine, and The Utne Reader from 2000 to 2023 were assembled and classified according to theme to enable changes in content to be analyzed. As the paper’s subsequent analysis reports, while each media’s record is varied in detail, from around the year 2010 a broad consensus around the importance of environmental issues in the future of food begins to occur in all four sources. While such a finding is not in itself surprising, as the paper concludes, it does confirm the hypothesis advanced by Warren Belasco (2006) that predictions largely reflect present concerns and threaten to be overwhelmed by them. Keywords: future of food, forecasts, North America, newspapers.