Does sustainability in food have a future – summary
- Sustainability interest varies widely with some sectors and trends declining while others grow
- Sustainable packaging demand rises supported by regulation and consumer willingness to pay
- Meat alternatives face declines yet evolve through hybrids and non‑mimic categories
- EU sustainability rules trend toward simplification to support business competitiveness
- Regenerative agriculture surges as companies seek resilience against climate‑driven shocks
Sustainability was once near-ubiquitous. Companies everywhere aimed to extol their green virtues, emphasising the ways in which they were helping, not harming, the planet.
Now, things have started to shift. Sustainability is not always perceived as an unadulterated good. Sustainable food trends are changing.
Instead of boasting about their sustainability credentials, some companies are keeping them quiet, a practice known as ‘greenhushing’. A small number are even adopting ‘sustainability by stealth’, meaning they’re still enacting green practices, just not telling anyone about them.
But the sustainability story is complex, and different in each context.
Sustainable packaging
Despite a general trend away from sustainability, one area which is seeing the opposite, albeit modestly, is sustainable packaging.
According to food and beverage analytics group Future Market Insights, sustainable packaging is predicted to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.7% between 2026 and 2036. Modest growth, perhaps, but growth nonetheless.
The predicted growth of sustainable packaging is in part due to the encroachment of regulation, such as the EU’s recent Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
Nevertheless, consumer demand for sustainable packaging does exist. Consumers are particularly concerned about the recyclability and carbon footprint of packaging, explains Adam M. Adamek PhD, innovation director at the organisation EIT Food.
Consumers are even willing to pay a higher price for sustainability in packaging, he says. Gen Z are one of the main drivers of this trend.
In packaging at least, it seems sustainability does have a future.
Meat alternatives
Meat alternatives, on the other hand, are seeing significant decline.
In plant-based, companies such as Beyond Meat are losing revenue consistently. In cultivated meat, key players such as Believer Meats and Meatable have already gone under.
Do meat alternatives have a future? It’s not, strictly speaking, a yes or no answer. In their current form, they are fast losing traction. But the category is evolving, and with this evolution comes new opportunities for success.
For example, major brands such as This, Moving Mountains and Beyond Meat have moved into categories that don’t explicitly mimic meat, such as falafel.
Meanwhile, the hybrid meat market is seeing significant interest from retailers, who want to cut costs and keep to their sustainability commitments.
The future of meat alternatives may not look like their past, but this does not mean that they don’t have a future.
Regenerative agriculture
Regenerative agriculture is being embraced wholeheartedly by industry, even as other sustainability initiatives fall by the wayside.
The market for regenerative agriculture has substantial growth potential. According to analytics company Data M Intelligence, it will grow at a CAGR of 18.20% between 2025 and 2032.
Even now, regen ag is ramping up. Just last month, Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, announced two new regenerative agriculture initiatives.
Not long before that, Unilever and PepsiCo were named among the members of a newly announced initiative to boost adoption in North America.
Other giants, such as Danone and Mondelēz International, have extensive regenerative agriculture initiatives of their own.
What’s driving this demand? Well, it’s not primarily consumers. While there is some consumer knowledge about regenerative agriculture, it’s often haphazard.
A far more prominent reason for companies to embrace regenerative practices is for supply chain resilience. According to many key industry players, they are looking to regenerative agriculture to help deal with climate shocks.
Despite this success, regenerative agriculture still has no globally accepted definition. The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI), an industry association which includes a wide range of key players such as Mondelēz, Mars, McCain and McDonalds, does have one. But there is nothing enshrined in law.
While a number of practices, such as cover cropping and no till agriculture, are commonly associated with regenerative, without a clear definition there is nothing to make companies stick to it.
On the whole, the future seems bright for regen ag. But at some point, people will need to agree on what it is.
Regulation
While not a trend that comes and goes, regulation underpins what the food industry can and cannot do. When regulation changes, a lot of other things follow.
Regulation around sustainability, at least in the EU, is changing. EU sustainability regulations are being refocused, refined and reformed.
Some, such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), are still in the works. This regulation aims to prevent its seven covered commodities (coffee, cocoa, soy, cattle, rubber, wood and palm oil) entering the EU if they are found to be linked to deforestation.
But the EUDR has now been delayed for two years in a row. Furthermore, it has been successively revised and simplified, with the aim to make the due diligence process easier. It is due to be implemented in December this year, but not before the completion of further simplification due in April.
Meanwhile, other due diligence regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), have been simplified to ‘boost European competitiveness.’
These regulations aim to codify the responsibility of large companies, including food companies, to do due diligence around sustainability efforts.
The requirements of the CSDDD and CSRD have been reduced, as have the reporting obligations of smaller companies. The threshold for the number of employees a company must have in order to be within scope has been increased.
While the EU’s sustainability regulations are still in place, the trend appears, at the present moment, to be towards simplification.
Following a report by former Italian PM Mario Draghi criticising the EU’s lack of competitiveness, many policymakers are aiming to create a more business-friendly environment, particularly for smaller businesses.
