Introduction
The players in the Food Technology Game include
- Government
- Farmers
- Food Companies (Brands)
- Retailers (Grocery Stores and Restaurant)
- Consumers
Government establishes standards and regulations, which affect the price, health, and safety of food supplied by Farmers, Food Companies, and Retailers.
Farmers have different technologies available to them for increasing the productivity of their food supplies, such as machinery, chemicals, genetically engineering, and information/communication technologies.
When it comes to demand for food, Consumers care to greater or lesser extents about
- Low Price
- Convenience
- High Quality
- Healthy Food
- Moral or Sustainable Food
That is, Consumers have different preferences over the use of certain technologies by Farmers, Food Companies and Retailers. Furthermore, Consumers’ preferences are dynamic – they change over time – in response both to new information and to social influences.
Aside from the re-engineering costs, there are also time lags associated with changing the formulations of food supplies by Farmers, Food Companies, and Retailers.
Given
- The changing nature of Consumers’ preferences,
- Together with the costs of changing food supplies,
Farmers, Food Companies, and Retailers must choose which types of food to supply, based on their expectations of the quantity and longevity of demand for different food types by Consumers.
This analysis examines these different dynamics in the Food Technology Game.