Two recent major drivers of change in the food industry, particulary with plant-based foods, have been gene technologies and the entry of intellectual property into many areas of strategic and applied biology of the principal food plants. It seems likely that for the next few years advances in food processing will rely on plant breeding which takes advantages of the increasing knowledge base coming from gene technologies but which does not rely on the involvement of introduced transgenes. New diagnostics and assays will allow grains and other foods to be equipped with changes in their protein, lipid, starch and other biochemical components so that they better fit food functionalities and product quality requirements. Subsequently, genetically modified foods are likely to be accepted as consumers become more familiar with what is actually involved in bringing about the production of better and safer foods by these methods. Importantly, many improvements will involve adjustments without the addition of any new components. These will assist acceptance of the technologies. It seems inevitable that transgenic crops will eventually be the norm in our food production systems because the new technologies promise such significant gains in efficiencies on farm with corresponding increases in the sustainability and reliability of the production system. They also will provide for an unprecedented differentiation of raw materials designed to meet the demands of the increasingly discriminating consumer.