The food industry is learning to borrow from engineering. Automation technologies developed to save the car industry are helping the food industry. But just how far will robots and high tech take the food industry by the year 2020?

Grass is for cows and ageing hippies, right? But in 20 years' time, if we're not exactly eating the lawn, we'll be picnicking on its single cell proteins.

Changes in packaging technologies, as in other areas, are rarely as dramatic or comprehensive as long-term predictions tend to suggest they will be. It is only a matter of decades since the growing number of commercial polymers made some in the industry forecast the imminent demise of all non-plastic packaging.

If you think it's tough complying with food and drink legislation now, you ain't seen nothin yet - at least that's one vision from the legal experts when looking to 2020.

Man's eating habits have come a long way from the days of the hunter gatherer. Now, the closest consumers get to their ancestors is foraging for berries in Tesco's fruit aisle. Pretty advanced you might think, but not according to new product development (NPD) experts, many of whom are certain that 2020 will see a healthy eating revolution.

A recent EU report suggested that over the past five years the EU's food manufacturing sector has been suffering from a continuing succession of closures, restructuring, mergers and the transfer of jobs offshore.

Ultimately, it all comes down to whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. Will it be a future of milk and honey for all, or one of opulence for the few and drought, starvation and pestilence for the many?