Introduction to food disruptions

Abstract

The agri-food sector is one of the largest manufacturing sectors globally and comprises a dynamic societal-technical innovation ecosystem (Rowan, 2019; Saguy, Roos, & Cohen, 2018). In the EU, this increasingly important sector accounts for €1098 billion turnovers and employs 4.24 million (Saguy et al., 2018). Over the last decade, the food and beverage industry has doubled in size in the USA (Rowan and Galanakis, 2020). The food and drink industry was estimated to be worth £6 trillion in 2015, with packaging comprising almost £1.9 trillion of this value, where digital innovation is rapidly influencing the pace and scale of change (Rowan and Galanakis, 2020). Food manufacturers invested ca. $18 billion in capital expenditures in 2016 (Rowan and Galanakis, 2020).