This summer, the Science Museum will open a free exhibition that examines the past, present, and future of the food we eat.

The exhibition will look at the stories behind the everyday foods we consume, from 3,500 fermented sourdough bread to the first Quorn burger and the first beef steak grown outside a cow.

The exhibition will highlight how science enabled growing global populations to be better fed in the 20th century, examining the ideas and technologies that transformed farming—such as the invention of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides and increasing yields—but have left a challenging legacy, contributing to exploitation of the sea, intensive factory farming and monoculture crops.

Both human ingenuity and our ecological vulnerability will be illustrated through objects on display including a fragile potato leaf, one of the few surviving specimens collected during the Irish potato famine, and Fritz Haber’s sample of liquid ammonia, one of the most significant scientific inventions of the 20th century that helped feed billions through the creation of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.

After setting the scene, the exhibition will invite visitors to explore potential routes to a more sustainable future of food, revealing new scientific ideas and technologies, from cellular agriculture to agroecology and sustainable fishing, that may support future sustainable food production.

Visitors will also be invited to explore the history and future of ecological food production, discovering how ecology is being applied to food production to farm and fish while also supporting the natural world. On display will be a pioneering method of controlling pests with plants in Africa and an installation recreating a community-led regenerative seaweed and shellfish farm in Pembrokeshire. Stories of scientific and community efforts to conserve the genetic diversity of foods will also be told, from Norway’s ice-cold seed vaults to seed-swapping ceremonies in the Amazon and across the UK, highlighting wild and heritage plant varieties with climate resilience.

The exhibition will also invite visitors to consider the impact of the food we buy, cook and eat.

The exhibition, Future of Food opens at the Science Museum on 24th July 2025 and will be free to visit.