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2025 will likely see major changes in our global food and agriculture systems. The past year has been so important for decision-making, and I think 2025—full of uncertainty and also hope—will be a year where the choices we’ve made start to bear fruit.
There is a lot to be optimistic about this year. We can have food and agriculture systems that prioritize justice, care, nourishment, deliciousness, and health!
To get a better sense of what 2025 might bring, I called upon one of the sharpest minds in food media: my friend Kim Severson, an award-winning national food correspondent for the New York Times.
“We’re in a very break-the-rules moment,” Kim told me in our conversation, which you can listen to on this week’s episode of the Food Talk podcast. This is true across the board, she said—from the incoming Trump administration in the U.S. to the eating habits of young Gen Z-ers to the impact that drugs including GLP-1s like Ozempic could have on food.
What this means, she said, is that “we’re seeing from Gen Z is a no-bullshit approach to how they eat.” People, especially young folks, want things to be authentic and not too stuffy, and they’re changing the way that food companies are doing business.
“The minute that Gen Z smells something being off in terms of marketing, they’re not going to buy it,” Kim tells me. “Scratch cooking is really big, the idea of pure home cooking is big among Gen Z-ers, but they also appreciate a night out at Chili’s for bottomless chips and salsa and cheap margaritas. Gen Z-ers will buy pasture-raised eggs—that matters to them, if they can afford it—and at the same time, they’ll want freeze-dried Skittles just to check it out, because it’s fun.”
And agriculture is changing, too. I hope that, during the Trump-Vance administration in the United States, we will continue to see robust agricultural research and data. But if food workers are not protected, our food production systems will be forced to change. And Kim brought up an interesting point: If farmwork becomes more mechanized, the crops themselves will start to taste different, too.
From my perspective, this speaks to a broader task in front of us: The old ways of doing things might not work anymore. We can’t keep asking the same questions and repeating the same conversations we’ve been having for years. What we must do is make sure those new ways of thinking are rooted in equity, justice, and sustainability—not demonization nor deportation nor destruction.
Leaders of some of the most influential organizations across the food system are standing up for equality and equity, and so I hope we’ll all join together in listening to their voices.
I want to share some guiding predictions for the year ahead from a few more of my food system heroes:
Put agroecological farms at the center, implores Edie Mukiibi, President of Slow Food International: “In 2025, my hope and expectation is to put agroecological farms and farmers at the center, at the forefront of the transition of the food system to a more agroecological one, and a good, clean and fair one,” Mukiibi tells Food Tank. “Supporting agroecological farmers is one of the ways we can fix and overcome most of the challenges that we are facing today around the food and agriculture systems from climate change to ending hunger and poverty in most of the food producing areas.”
Fight for worker justice, argues Saru Jayaraman, Co-Founder and President of One Fair Wage. “Working people are in crisis,” she tells Food Tank. “There is an affordability crisis across the country. The cost of living is too high. The wages are too low. And so I am hopeful that in the food system and throughout the country—all systems—really prioritize the needs of working people, and the need to raise wages, raise the minimum wage, end sub-minimum wages for tipped workers, and [end] exemptions for farm workers so that everybody who’s working is able to feed their families and meet the cost of living.”
Focus on Indigenous crops and wisdom, says Michael Kotutwa Johnson, member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona and an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona. “I really hope that in 2025, we continue to provide those foods that are healthy for our indigenous communities here in the United States,” he says, and “that we help reinforce those place-based crops that have been grown for thousands of years that have allowed indigenous people to thrive and survive in the different regions of the United States.”
Listen to this week’s episode of Food Talk to hear my full conversation with Kim Severson and additional guiding predictions from other food system experts like Anna Lappé, Roger Thurow, and more. And check out our grand list of 125 food and agriculture organizations to watch in 2025 by clicking here.
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Photo courtesy of Sandie Clarke, Unsplash
