Imagining alternative futures for the Dutch poultry industry

In their quest for sustainable transformation, agricultural industries need to move beyond product and service innovation as well as rivalry between actors toward reconfiguring production and consumption systems. In mature industries like agriculture, envisioning alternatives that require systemic innovation is challenging due to the dominance of existing systems. This study constructs future images, as design tools, to expand the opportunity space for sustainable transformation. Focusing on the Dutch poultry industry, we conducted futures interviews to identify and structure drivers of change and use these to construct future images by identifying values-based themes. We constructed and visualized six coherent future images depicting alternative contexts for this industry: ‘zero-emission policy agenda,’ ‘farmers as entrepreneurial innovators,’ ‘collaborative ecosystem,’ ‘retail as an orchestrator,’ ‘happy animals, healthy humans,’ and ‘living labs in the knowledge economy.’ We discuss how these futures expand the opportunity space for novel production and consumption systems, drawing on distinct sustainability conceptualizations and different actors. • A methodology is developed for future images as design tools for innovation. • Future images are constructed based on values-based themes and drivers of change. • Future images are visualized as alternative socio-technical contexts. • Six distinct future images are presented, pointing to diverse innovation directions. • The methodology expands the opportunity space for system transformation.