interventions to realise its potential for food system sustainability (Eyhorn et al. 2019). Effectively communicating the relative environmental footprints of different foods to consumers must also be a priority (Potter and Röös 2021).

Diverse farming systems depend on soil structure and health. In discussing how to manage competition for land use and other resources, EASAC (2017) highlighted the critical role of soil, particularly with respect to its biological functions. A more recent EASAC assessment (2018) further emphasised the multiple roles of soil sustainability and implications for its management in informing policy development, a subject that has been relatively neglected in the EU of late. This neglect needs to be corrected. Among soil's biological functions, EASAC (2017) discussed emerging knowledge about the contribution of soil microbiomics (bacteria and fungi) to sustainable agriculture, e.g., in the strengthening of root systems and carbon sequestration. There is another link to the bioeconomy: the soil microbiome can be a resource for generating novel antibiotics and other high-value chemicals. Rapid progress continues in ascertaining the linkages between microbial diversity and ecosystem functions, including plant health under climate change, in particular, the role of soil microbial taxa in biogeochemical cycling, plant growth and carbon sequestration (Dubey et al. 2019; Wei et al. 2019).

There are continuing opportunities to link food systems and environmental objectives with bioeconomic policy: impetus and coordination has been imparted to the European Bioeconomy Strategy through the recent introduction of an EU-wide monitoring system<fnref n="3" /> for tracking the balancing of bioeconomic contributions to food and other outputs, in order to reduce environmental pressures. Systematic review of the literature suggests the need to prioritise biomass strategies to increase food production over those for animal feed or biofuels (Haines 2021). Scientific advances are bringing new opportunities to drive the bioeconomy of future foods (such as mycoproteins, algal feedstocks, cultured meat, Fanzo et al. 2020; Haines 2021).

## 3 Delivering Sustainable and Healthy Diets Under Climate Change

Climate change is already affecting the yield and quality of crops, with the potential for adverse consequences in terms of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, obesity, EASAC 2017). Systematic reviews of the literature have documented declines in the yields of starchy staple crops (Wang et al., 2018) and in the yields and nutritional quality of vegetables and legumes (Scheelbeek et al. 2018), fruits, nuts and seeds (Alae-Carew et al. 2020). Developing climate-resilient

<footnote n="3">³EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System, 2020, https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/bioeconomy/monitoring_en</footnote>
food systems should be a core part of UN FSS Action Track 5 (Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress).

It is important to evaluate how the agricultural sector can adapt to climate change and, at the same time, reduce its own contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Agriculture currently accounts for about 30% of total GHG emissions, if we include land conversion and direct, production-linked environmental costs (EASAC 2019). A key objective, therefore, for the UN FSS, when developing environment-health-climate change policies, is to simultaneously reduce both the triple burden of malnutrition and the contribution that food systems make to climate change and other environmental changes. The accumulating evidence indicates that the 1.5° and 2° C targets cannot be attained without rapid and ambitious changes to food systems (Clark et al. 2020). A combination of measures is necessary to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture, including improved agronomic practices, the reduction of waste, and an increase in sustainable consumption patterns. The evidence base indicates significant health benefits from reducing red meat consumption (where that is excessive) and increasing the use of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds in diets (EASAC 2019; Willett et al. 2019). The impact of changes to dietary guidelines on micronutrient intakes must be considered, especially for vulnerable groups. A recent systematic review of environmental footprints and the health effects of “sustainable diets” (Jarmul et al. 2020) concluded that, although co-benefits are not universal and some trade-offs are likely, when carefully-designed and adapted to circumstances, diets can play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation, sustainable food systems and future population health. Unfortunately, in proposing recommendations for policy solutions, issues related to the accessibility and affordability of proposed healthy and sustainable diets are often overlooked (Hirvonen et al. 2020).

Policy implications for the promotion of sustainable food systems that reward good management practices include the introduction of sustainable stewardship, food labelling and certification schemes. Current food policy in many countries concentrates more on how to protect consumer health from contaminated food than the degree to which the State should use health and environmental considerations to regulate the supply of foodstuffs (Godfray et al. 2018). Resolving this role of the State has significant implications for rebalancing consumption by introducing incentives/disincentives for carbon and biodiversity costs of populations at risk of overconsumption, while protecting vulnerable groups. At the same time, governments must consider how best to measure and monitor policy changes for their impact on food production, consumption and health.

# 4 Responding to COVID-19

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected all components of the food system. Long-term implications are hard to predict, as they will depend on the length and severity of the pandemic. The effects may also be compounded by shocks to production (such as drought and the interruption of seasonal labour supply for planting and harvesting), and by factors influencing the distribution, access and
affordability of food (e.g., disruptions to global food trade and food price specula-
tions; Moran et al. 2020). To date, global supply chains continue to function in spite
of isolation policies (Galanakis 2020; Moran et al. 2020), although production
problems that resulted in an increase in the price of fresh and perishable products
have also been reported (Coluccia et al. 2021). In Europe, there has been an increase
in food wastage, partly as a result of the shutdown of restaurants, schools and other
community facilities. The pandemic has affected the ability of vulnerable groups
within the population to access sufficient and healthy food due to rising unemploy-
ment and enforced self-isolation, in particular, families with young children, and is
exacerbating diet-related health inequalities (Power et al. 2020). Consumption-
related challenges reported during lockdowns include a small increase in the intake
of calories and a decrease in the intake of vitamins, minerals and plant-based protein
and fatty acids, in particular, by the elderly as a group (Battle-Bayer et al. 2020;
IUFoST 2020). Combined with reduced physical exercise during lockdown, these
dietary changes may increase the incidence of obesity and related NCDs. Hoarding
and panic buying during pandemics, also reported, could distort the food supply
chain and need to be better managed (IUFoST 2020).

Planning for a sustainable economic recovery after the pandemic provides a
window of opportunity to make food systems more resilient, nutritious and environ-
mentally sustainable, avoiding a return to business-as-usual (EASAC 2020b; Benton
2020; IUFoST 2020; Rowan and Galanakis 2020; Sarkis et al. 2020). Because the
pandemic exposed the vulnerability of overreliance on just-in-time and lean delivery
systems, globalised food production and distribution systems based on complex
value chains should be re-examined, not only in terms of economic efficiency, but
also for their environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation potential.
Opportunities for the increased localisation of production systems should be
explored. Research priorities also include the development of food safety measures
and bioanalytical protocols for food and environmental safety along the food chain;
and the development of nutritional foods to promote immune function, which may
include foods for medical use by the elderly population, as well as other vulnerable
groups. Further areas for innovation to capitalise on scientific opportunities comprise
digitisation and the implementation of smarter logistics systems, including reverse
logistics for secondary materials and waste products (IUFoST 2020; Rizou et al.
2020; Rowan et al. 2020; Sarkis et al. 2020). The generation of robust baseline data
on malnutrition levels in the EU Member States remains an important knowledge
gap, in particular, for vulnerable sectors of the population (EASAC 2017).

5 New Breeding Techniques: A Case Study in Science, Technology and Innovation

Improved breeding of plants and animals for agricultural production is a key
component of an integrated transformation of food systems to deliver healthy and
nutritious diets sustainably in the face of climate change. For plants, key target traits
for improvement include increased tolerance to drought (including soil water use efficiency), heat, and salinity, with a focus on the development of multiple traits; improved use of soil nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous and essential elements) to reduce dependency on fertilisers; pest and disease resistance; and healthier nutrient composition (EASAC 2017, 2020c). Animal breeding priorities comprise animal health (disease resistance and stress tolerance, in particular, regarding heat); and nutrition, including strategies to mitigate enteric gut methane emissions. Achieving these objectives will require the use of the full toolbox of breeding technologies available, from conventional breeding assisted by advances in genetics and genomics, through to the use of a set of technologies collectively referred to as new breeding techniques (NBTs) and, in particular, genome editing.

Recent advances using genome editing include the development of varieties with improved nutritional content, such as high protein wheat with increased grain weight and more nutritious potatoes (Hameed et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2018, 2020). In wheat, gene editing has also been used to derive low-gluten transgene-free plants (Sánchez-León et al. 2018). Gene editing allows for developing crop varieties with multiple resistances to biotic and abiotic stresses (e.g., in tomatoes: Saikia et al. 2020). Looking ahead, research priorities include the (re)domestication of high-nutrient stress-tolerant crops by targeting known domestication genes in established crops (e.g., for the cultivation of quinoa in Europe; López-Marqués et al. 2020; and see also van Tassel et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2020), and the development of perennial grain crops to maximise sustained crop yields (DeHann et al. 2020).

Crops produced through genome editing techniques, including those with no foreign DNA, are regulated differently in different countries (Schmidt et al. 2020), with Europe holding the most restrictive regulatory regime. In 2018, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that crops produced by gene editing technologies are to be subjected to the same regulations as GM crops (Directive 2001/18/EC). The focus of this regulation is the process by which a crop is developed, not the breeding product, and as a result, crop varieties that are equivalent from a scientific perspective but were developed through different methods will be regulated differently (Jansson 2018). The legislation's far-reaching consequences include the stifling of innovation, since the cost of pre-market evaluations will deter investment in the technology, in particular, in the public sector and by small and medium enterprises (SMEs; Ricroch 2020; Jorasch 2020). Around 40% of SMEs and 33% of large companies ceased or reduced their gene editing-related R&D activities after the 2018 ruling (Jorasch 2020). The EU is also lagging behind in terms of generating innovation: while the United States and China have filed 872 and 858 patents for applications for gene editing applications, respectively, EU countries together have filed only 194 (Martin-Laffon et al. 2019). There has also been a very striking reduction in the number of EU countries carrying out field trials of crops improved by either GM or gene editing (Ricroch 2020). In addition, the impossibility of distinguishing between edited and naturally derived varieties makes the law unenforceable, especially if the varieties are considered legal elsewhere (Martin-Laffon et al. 2019; Schmidt et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2020).
EASAC advised (EASAC 2020a, b, c) that it is the products of new technologies and their use, rather than the technology itself, that should be evaluated according to the scientific evidence base, and that the legal framework should be revised. The potential costs of not using a new technology, or being slow in adoption, must be acknowledged, as there is no time to lose in resolving the problems for food and nutrition security.

## 6 Strengthening Research and Its Uptake into Policy and Practice

The purpose of this Brief has been to address three questions: How can scientific advances help to fill knowledge gaps in delivering food and nutrition security? What does Europe need to build its research capabilities and help build global scientific capacity and partnerships? How best can science-based evidence be used to inform innovation, policy development and practice? Our recommendations are as follows.

### Filling Knowledge Gaps with New Research

In the previous sections, we have exemplified how new research is of unequivocal value in addressing societal challenges. In addition to these examples, and referring back to other scientific priorities in EASAC 2017, there have been recent advances in big data handling, robotics, artificial intelligence and mobile communications for precision agriculture (Klerkx and Rose 2020; El-Gayar et al. 2020). There have also been substantial advances in the science of human gut microbiomics and linkages to diet and health. For example, methodological studies are rapidly clarifying characteristics of a healthy microbiome (Eisenstein 2020) and intervention studies have demonstrated the health value of a Mediterranean diet in older cohorts in different European countries, explained in terms of gut microbiome alterations (Ghosh et al. 2020). Advances in social science research are increasingly important to understanding determinants of inequity in food systems, mechanisms for empowerment of marginalised groups and models for entrepreneurial activity (Fanzo et al. 2020). Social science research is also helpful in evaluating specific instruments for the promotion of sustainable food in EU policy, e.g., taxation schemes, consumer cooperatives, labelling and governance initiatives (Marsden et al. 2018; SAPEA 2020).

### Building the Research Enterprise

Europe has mature systems for research funding at the national and EU levels (EASAC 2017). Nonetheless, it is essential for the scientific community to continue making the case for investment in research, including fundamental science, and to recognise the value of involving other stakeholders in the design and conduct of research (SAPEA 2020). Greater inclusivity depends in part on building public confidence in science and shaping public understanding of the challenges to food and nutrition security in a changing public landscape often characterised by less
deference to authority and scientific experts (Fears et al. 2020). Strengthening research capabilities in Europe also depends on understanding the impact from the progressive loss of key skills in the EU (e.g., in plant sciences), and on reversing those losses while also developing new skills needed by the next generation of researchers (e.g., in transdisciplinary thinking). The EU also has an important role in developing global critical mass in research, e.g., by fostering research partnerships, sharing data and infrastructure, and contributing to tackling those problems that can only be addressed at the global scale. The European Commission recently launched an important initiative to assess the need for an international platform for food systems science.<fnref n="4" />

## Translating Research Outputs

Ensuring the robustness, legitimacy and relevance of scientific evidence is vital if its impacts on innovation, policy and practice are to be realised. Overcoming obstacles in translation also depends on public confidence in science, the integration of outputs from across diverse disciplines (evidence synthesis for sustainability, Anon 2020), and the accounting of new models (e.g., for open innovation) and trade-offs between different goals, e.g., for nutrition and environment (Fears et al. 2019). Academies of science are well placed to help lead the scientific community at the science-policy interfaces. The EU already has a relatively mature science-policy interface in place, whose operational characteristics may serve as a model for other regions (Fears et al. 2019) and, currently, there is active scientific engagement in a diverse range of public policies in development, including F2F, Common Agricultural Policy and Biodiversity strategy, bioeconomy, circular economy and the European Green Deal. The F2F strategy has important and comprehensive objectives, but it remains vital to clarify and resolve governance challenges, including the tangible links to Member State action (Schebesta and Candell 2020). There is also ambiguity in defining food sustainability and, currently, a mismatch between F2F and the Common Agricultural Policy that must be resolved by developing compatible legal instruments and ensuring better coordination between the relevant Directorate-Generals (for health and agriculture). F2F highlights several controversies, e.g., on the objectives for food pack labelling, targets for pesticide use in farming, and nature-based farming solutions, all of which require a stronger evidence base. Moreover, the modelling of different scenarios for adopting the proposed F2F targets (Beckman et al. 2020) finds reductions in EU agricultural production and diminished competitiveness in both domestic and export markets. Modelling also predicted consequences for the rest of the world, driving up food prices and negatively affecting consumer budgets. While the F2F strategy is rather inward-oriented and has given little explicit attention to external effects in the rest of the world, depending on how incentives/disincentives are applied in the EU, there is a risk of pushing consumers towards the import of food produced less sustainably than in the EU. Therefore, there must be much greater

<footnote n="4">⁴https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/new-high-level-expert-group-assess-need-international-platform-food-systems-science-2021-feb-17_en</footnote>
assessment of the potential consequences of the F2F proposals within the broad context of food system transformation.

The EU can also teach a cautionary lesson on the obstacles created by inflexible regulation that delays or impedes the translation of research outputs into innovation and practice. In the case study discussed previously, the EU GMO regulatory framework was found to be inflexible, disproportionate, not based on current scientific evidence and not fit for purpose. Urgent reform of the regulation of new plant (and animal) breeding techniques is essential for agricultural innovation to realise its potential in achieving SDG targets, as well as for the EU to maintain its international competitiveness and to obtain value from its public investment in research (EASAC 2020c). The current obstacles have implications beyond the EU: EU policy decisions have consequences for those lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) who look to the EU for scientific leadership or as a market for their innovative exports.

In conclusion, the use of science and technology to transform food systems for health, nutrition, sustainable agriculture and the environment depends on progress across a transdisciplinary research agenda, but also on facilitating the use of science by stakeholders, such as farmers, manufacturers, regulators and consumers, as well as policymakers. It is time to be more ambitious in identifying, investing in, and using scientific opportunities. Academies of science stand ready to play their part in catalysing the necessary actions for food systems in transition, and at the science-policy interface.

**Acknowledgements** This chapter was drafted by Claudia Canales and Robin Fears, in discussion with Volker ter Meulen. We thank colleagues from EASAC, the Biosciences Steering Panel and the Working Group on FNSA (EASAC 2017) for helpful discussions and, in particular, Tim Benton, Thomas Elmqvist and Aifric O'Sullivan for making important points.

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# Transforming Chinese Food Systems for Both Human and Planetary Health

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Check for
updates

Shenggen Fan, Jikun Huang, Fusuo Zhang, Wenhua Zhao, Hongyuan Song, Fengying Nie, Yu Sheng, Jinxia Wang, Jieying Bi, and Wenfeng Cong

## 1 Introduction

Enormous successes have been achieved with regard to food throughout the world in the past, but future challenges are massive. Food systems embrace the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal (loss or waste) of food products that originate from agriculture (incl. livestock), forestry, fisheries, and food industries, and the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they are

S. Fan

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Academy of Global Food Economics and Policy, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
e-mail: S.FAN@CGIAR.ORG

J. Huang · Y. Sheng · J. Wang

China Centre for Agricultural Policy, School of Advanced Agricultural and Sciences (SAAS), Peking University, Beijing, China

F. Zhang

College of Resources and Environmental Sciences (CRES), National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

W. Zhao

National Institute for Nutrition and Health, Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), Beijing, China

H. Song

Research Center for Rural Economy (RCRE), Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, Beijing, China

F. Nie · J. Bi

Agricultural Information Institute (AII), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, China

W. Cong

College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
embedded (von Braun et al. 2021; Fan et al. 2021). They also generate massive externalities, and are a cause of many economic, social and health crises, including the triple burden of malnutrition (undernourishment or hunger, micronutrient deficiencies or hidden hunger, overweight and obesity), food safety scares and zoonotic pandemics such as the ongoing COVID-19. Thus, urgent actions are needed to transform the current food systems to be nutrition- and health-driven, productive and efficient (thus improving affordability), environmentally sustainable and climate-smart, resilient and inclusive.

Despite rapid ascension in global food production, consumption, trade and investment, the voices of emerging economies are largely absent in setting the global food systems agenda. This will hinder the transformation of their own food systems, as well as the global system. Taking China as an example, the country's food systems have experienced substantial transformation for the past four decades, but still face many challenges that threaten both human health and environmental sustainability. Fortunately, the government has recently made several important commitments in regard to food and nutrition security, health, the environment and climate change, including achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. This provides a unique opportunity, as well as responsibility, to reshape food systems in order to achieve these national goals.

This chapter aims to review major achievements, enabling factors, and challenges, and to propose a pathway for Chinese food systems to achieve both human and planetary health. Chinese experience, and the lessons learned therein, have global implications, not only because of its size, but also because of its strategy to strengthen the south-south cooperation in order to enhance global food security, climate mitigation, resilience to unexpected crises, and protection of the world's natural resources.

## 2 Evolution of Food and Nutrition Security in China

Impressive progress in China's growth in agricultural productivity and the subsequent growth in agricultural production has enabled the country to feed nearly 20% of the world's population using only 8% of the world's arable land and 5% of global fresh water (Lu et al. 2015; Huang et al. 2020). During the period 1978–2020, China's agricultural output (in real terms) has grown at the rate of 4.6% a year (more than 60% driven by total factor productivity growth), much higher than the 0.9% of annual population growth for the same period of time. In the meantime, the structure of agricultural production has shifted towards high-value and high-protein products (NBSC 2020). The farm economy is now highly commercialized and the output value of high-value commodities (including vegetables, fruits, livestock and fish) has, on average, accounted for around 70% of agricultural output value (Huang and Shi 2021).

With increased food supply, China has substantially increased the capacity of food supply for its growing and wealthier population. Over the past three
decades, the prevalence of global hunger has been on the decline, among which two-thirds of the people who escaped hunger globally live in China (FAO 2020). Between 1990 and 2020, the prevalence of undernutrition in China dropped from 22.9% to below 2.5% (FAO stops reporting when the rate is below 2.5%, thus the hunger rate in China is much lower than 2.5%), and the daily calorie intake per capita increased from 2,814 kal/day in 2000 to 3,197 kal/day in 2017 (Table 1). The food consumption pattern has also become more diversified, with the proportion of high-protein and high-energy products having increased substantially. Data from national household consumption surveys shows that the overall intake of staple foods (in particular, grains) decreased by approximately one-third over the past three decades, and the daily consumption of vegetables, fruits and meat per capita were more than doubled in 2018 compared to 1997 (Zhao et al. 2018). The prevalence of stunting and underweight in China are well below the average for developing countries, and undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies have declined sharply (Figs. 1 and 2). The overall mortality from cardiovascular diseases, all types of cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and type-2 diabetes has declined from 18.5% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2020.

**The agricultural market has been gradually reformed domestically and internationally, helping to increase the allocative efficiency of the food value chain** (Huang and Rozelle 1996; De Brauw et al. 2004). Domestically, marketization reforms started with the so-called nonstrategic products (such as vegetables and fruits) in the mid-1980s, gradually moving to animal products (fish and meat) and

<table><caption>**Table 1** Calorie supply per capita and per day (kilocalories), 2000–2017</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Brazil</th><th>China</th><th>India</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>2000</td><td>2880</td><td>2814</td><td>2380</td></tr><tr><td>2005</td><td>3078</td><td>2883</td><td>2270</td></tr><tr><td>2010</td><td>3230</td><td>3044</td><td>2442</td></tr><tr><td>2015</td><td>3238</td><td>3187</td><td>2461</td></tr><tr><td>2016</td><td>3236</td><td>3172</td><td>2496</td></tr><tr><td>2017</td><td>3248</td><td>3197</td><td>2517</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: OECD/FAO (2022)

<figure><img src="image_156.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1** Percentage of undernourished population in China, 2001–2019. (Source: The World Bank 2020)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_157.png" /><figcaption>(b) Under-weight rate (%)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_158.png" /><figcaption>(c) Thin rate (%)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_159.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2** Nutrition Statistics of Children under 5 years old in China, 1992–2020. (Source: 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2020 China Nutrition and Health Surveys)</figcaption></figure>

then to crops such as sugarcane, edible oils, cotton and grains (Sicular 1988; Rozelle et al. 2000; Rozelle and Swinnen 2004; Huang and Rozelle 2006). Internationally, China reduced the average import tariff for all agricultural products from 42.2% in 1992 to 12% in 2004, making China one of the freest agricultural trading nations in the world. Equally, remarkable growth also occurred in the upstream and downstream sectors of agriculture. While agriculture only accounted for 6.7% GDP and 25% employment in 2019, the food system in China (including agriculture, agribusiness, food processing, packaging, transportation, wholesale and retail trade, food services, finance and insurance, advertising and input supplies) accounted for 23% of GDP and more than 30% of total employment (Fan et al. 2021). Recent trends toward greater concentration of agricultural inputs and food distribution, the increasing role of E-commerce and logistic technologies, and the growing importance of food safety, quality, and other technical requirements have all resulted in dramatic changes in Chinese agri-food systems (Chen et al. 2019; Fan and Swinnen
2020). With the rapid expansion of Internet access and the steady process of logistics infrastructure construction, China is now leading the world in E-commerce and has shown the resilience of its food system in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

**China has facilitated rural structural transformation and off-farm employment, substantially contributing to poverty reduction and increasing equal accessibility to food.** Where off-farm employment was once rare, today, a majority of rural household income is earned off-farm. The share of rural labor off-farm employment had increased from 9.3% in 1978 to 84.4% in 2018 (Li et al. 2021). Agriculture employed 71% of labor in 1978 (Rozelle et al. 1999). By 2019, the share of employment in agriculture had fallen to 25% (NBSC 2020). At the same time, the number of people in rural China living in extreme poverty fell from 250 million in 1978 down to zero in 2020 (NBS various years). According to the current nationwide poverty threshold—RMB 2300 a day in 2010 prices, or slightly more than $2 a day in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms—the number of rural poor decreased by 98.99 million over the past decade, and all of the remaining 832 poor counties (128 thousand villages) have moved out of poverty (NBS various years). China has become the first developing country to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target one decade ahead of schedule.

**Green development and resilience have been integrated into agricultural development strategy.** In terms of resource management, China is one of a few large countries to make substantial public investment in irrigation, flood control and land improvement (Wang et al. 2019). The area of irrigated agricultural land increased from 45 million hectares in 1978 to 68.7 million hectares in 2019 (NBSC 2020). Today, more than half of China's cultivated land is irrigated. Investment in low- to mid-quality land has also helped to improve soil quality and raise agricultural production capacity. In response to environmental degradation and climate change, the government has initiated the first national program to protect natural resources in 2016, and thereafter implemented a series of directories and regulations to tackle environmental degradation and restore the agroecosystem. In 2021, the newly issued regulation towards low carbon and “dual cycle” rural development highlighted measures for controlling livestock waste, agricultural plastics, and the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides. With these efforts, the use of fertilizers and pesticides has substantially declined since the mid-2010s (Figs. 3 and 4). These indicate that China is on the way to developing a greener and more resilient food system in the face of limited environmental resources and climate change.

## 3 Enabling Factors Driving Chinese Food System Transformation

Numerous studies have analyzed the factors contributing to China's agricultural growth and food system transformation. These include sequencing policy and investment priorities, embracing technological progress and innovation, integrating
<figure><img src="image_160.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 3** Total use of fertilizers and its composition change in China: 1984–2019. (Source: China rural statistical yearbook, various years)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_161.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4** Total pesticide use and its intensity: 1990–2019. (Source: China rural statistical yearbook, various years)</figcaption></figure>

food and nutrition security into poverty reduction programs, protecting natural resources and the environment, building resilience against risks and shocks, and promoting ICT and E-commerce.

## 3.1 Sequential Choice of Policy and Investment Initiatives

Sequentially choosing and prioritizing policy instruments to meet the stage-by-stage development goal is key to achieving successful food system transformation. The household responsibility system (HRS), implemented during the period 1978–84, was regarded as the starting point of China’s agricultural and food system transformation. The reform dismantled the people’s communes and contracted cultivated land to individual households, largely on the basis of the number of
people and/or laborers in the household. These triggered strong growth in both agricultural output and productivity, and thus substantially increased the food supply (Fan 1991; Lin 1992; Huang and Rozelle 1996; McMillan et al. 1989; Jin et al. 2002; Sheng et al. 2020).

Reforms in land policy have also paved the way for market reforms implemented since the mid-1980s (Huang et al. 2004; Huang and Rozelle 2006), the agricultural trade reforms of the 1990s (Anderson et al. 2004; Huang et al. 2007), and institutional reforms in labor and financial markets (particularly the gradual relaxation of the household registration system, or hukou).

**Prioritizing investment initiatives is also critical.** China invested substantially in rural public infrastructure even before the institutional and market reforms that began in the late 1970s, but mainly focused on production- and transportation-related infrastructures. Since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, investments in rural areas have been further boosted as part of the financial stimulus package. As a result, China has become one of a few large countries with substantial increases in public investment in water (irrigation and flood) control and land improvement (Wang et al. 2019). Massive investment has also been made in rural roads and wholesale markets, fostering market integration and linking hundreds of millions of small farms with retailers and consumers. Highway mileage increased from 890,000 km in 1978 to 10 million km in 2020 (NBS various years), and nearly every village has access to a public paved road. Empirical evidence shows that government spending on rural roads has a very high impact on agricultural transformation, off-farm employment and poverty reduction (Zhang et al. 2004, 2019).

## 3.2 Agricultural R&D and Innovation

China has invested significantly in agricultural R&D and developed a strong technology innovation system (Hu and Huang 2011; Babu et al. 2015). In 2015, public expenditure on agricultural R&D was estimated to reach more than RMB 26 billion yuan (roughly USD$4.1 billion), overtaking the public spending of the US and ranking as number one in the world (Chai et al. 2019). This system has generated a wide range of innovative technologies used by millions of small and large farms in crop, livestock and fishery production, as well as in agricultural inputs and farm machines.

China has also developed a comprehensive agricultural extension system, despite the twisting path to reform of the past. The system covers all townships across the country, and the extension staff work closely with farmers. While the role of the private sector in providing extension services has been rising in recent years, maintaining a strong public extension system is crucial to agricultural production dominated by small farms.

**The increased public agricultural R&D investment and the development of an agricultural extension system have been translated directly into productivity gains.** China was one of the first developing countries to develop and extend the
“green revolution” technology in rice in the 1960s (Stone 1988). Technological changes in wheat, maize, cash crops and animal production have also been impressive since the 1990s (Jin et al. 2010). Empirical studies show that the average annual growth rate of TFP in the grain sector increased by about 3% before the mid-2000s (Fan 1997; Jin et al. 2008). TFP growth rates for cash crops and livestock and the whole agricultural sector were even higher, exceeding 3.5% per year after 1992 (Sheng et al. 2020). Rapid agricultural productivity growth has enabled the country to save its limited land and water resources. Since the mid-1990s, China’s agricultural productivity growth has turned towards relying on innovations from plant biotechnology. The wide cultivation with” Bt cotton” is an example of successful uses of genetic modification technology in the developing world—a technological change that has benefited millions of farmers (Huang et al. 2002). Meanwhile, the recent emerging technologies (e.g., ICT, big data technology, etc.) are also changing the path of innovations in the country’s agriculture.

## 3.3 Poverty Reduction Schemes and National Nutrition Programs

The success in poverty reduction (and hunger) in China is not only the result of sustaining rapid economic growth, but also the result of the implementation of large-scale, long-lasting, government-led poverty alleviation strategies. Targeting poverty alleviation policies and development-oriented poverty alleviation programs (Liu et al. 2017; Fan and Cho 2021; Cheng et al. 2021) have both contributed to the success. First, continued reforms and opening-up policies reduced poverty through economic development (Wang et al. 2008; Yan 2016). Second, development-oriented poverty alleviation policies are an important part of China’s anti-poverty strategies. China improved the living conditions of poor areas by implementing preferential development policies, to enable these areas to obtain special development opportunities and to partially offset the constraints associated with poor natural conditions. Development programs in infrastructure and public services were offered to poor areas, helping them improve the development environment (Yan 2016). Rapid poverty reduction directly contributed to an increase in the accessibility of food for a large proportion of the population, thereby reducing hunger in a historic record.

A number of nutrition intervention programs and policies have been implemented to improve national nutrition, in which dynamic government guidance (reflecting the changing status) has played an important role. Examples include the Children Nutrition Monitoring and Improvement Project from 1990 to 1995, the Soybean Action Plan of 1996, the Chinese Nutrition Improvement Action Plan of 1997, the School Milk Project of 2000, the Chinese Fortification
Project of 2004, the Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Compulsory Education Students since 2012, and Nutrition Improvement Projects in Poverty Regions (YYB for Children under 2 years old) in place since 2012, among others. In contrast to the nutrition policies of the 1990s, which emphasized the abundance and availability of food, nutrition policies during the past ten years have placed increasing importance on balanced diets and food safety. The recurring themes of recent policies involve providing recommended nutrient intake and targeted agricultural development based on population and nutritional requirements.

## 3.4 Environment and Resource Management Practices

China's experience of policy practice in tackling environmental challenges, climate change and rural sustainable development has progressed in two ways: **through economic encouragement and persuasion**. Economic encouragement has been more widely used, compared to the persuasive approach. Through government subsidies, farmers are given the incentive to adopt more environment-friendly production technologies, which, in turn, play an important role in alleviating the overuse of fertilizers and chemicals and the recycling of wastes from livestock.

**Taking irrigation water as an example, the government has traditionally focused on the supply side and relied on building reservoirs to meet the growing water demand** (Xie et al. 2009; Wang et al. 2016a). Over time, it has become clear that catching up with the expanding water demand is a difficult task. The government started to advocate irrigation technologies to reduce irrigation withdrawal in the early 1990s (Lohmar et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2020). Another example is Water User Associations, which began replacing village collective management of surface irrigation in the mid-1990s. This approach had been adopted by most provinces by early 2001, but with mixed results. It is associations utilizing water-saving incentives that have achieved more efficient irrigation (Wang et al. 2005, 2016b). Research also reveals a great policy scope for expanding irrigation technologies to generate real water saving in rural areas.

**In addition to water preservation, land protection and soil quality improvement have also received more attention.** Since the 18th National Congress, the red line for 1.8 billion mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) of arable land has been drawn to ensure agricultural production with adequate land resource. Meanwhile, the national Soil-Testing and Fertilizer Recommendation Program in 2005 and the Zero Increase Action Plan in 2015, initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture, have played a crucial role in holding back the increase in massive fertilizer inputs and nutrient losses, while increasing food production (Jiao et al. 2018). Consequently, agricultural chemical use (i.e., fertilizer and pesticides) has recently fallen (Figs. 3 and 4).
## 3.5 Strategies for Strengthening Food System Resilience Under COVID-19

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems exposed the vulnerabilities of the supply chain throughout the world in 2020, although the extent of disruption varies widely, globally and in Asia. In response to this pandemic shock, food systems in China have been proven relatively resilient when compared with other regions. **The Chinese experience has been widely acknowledged globally and is believed to have played an important role in fighting the pandemic.** These experiences include (1) early actions taken to make sure that the whole supply chain worked smoothly through the green channel; (2) the well-organized and prompt response of governments; (3) the collaboration of multi-stakeholders (gov-ernment, scientists, agricultural technicians, private companies, NGOs, O2O plat-form etc.); and (4) collaboration and joint-response between rural and urban areas.

## 3.6 Reducing the Food Loss and Waste as a National Strategy

Developing a national vision and strategy for reducing food loss and waste allows China to take the lead in achieving the UN SDGs for halving food loss and waste. In 2010, the State Grain Administration issued “Recommendations to Combat Food Waste,” which include raising public awareness on reducing food waste, enhancing food purchase and storage, accelerating food logistic infrastructure development, improving the standard of food products, developing and disseminat-ing new technologies for food waste reduction, and encouraging food processing businesses to combat food waste through the trusted grain and (edible) oil program. One well-known example is the “Clean Your Plate” initiative, promoted through advertising campaigns to raise public awareness on reducing food waste. More recently, China issued the Anti-Food Waste Law, and became the first country to enact anti-food waste activities in the developing world.

## 3.7 The ICT Revolution and E-Commerce Application

The recent development of rural E-commerce has added fuel to food system transformation, providing a new approach to help smallholder farmers over-come barriers to markets (Hamad et al. 2018; Jamaluddin 2013; Li et al. 2020a, b; Ma et al. 2020; Okoli et al. 2010; Rahayu and Day 2017; Yu and Cui 2019). Rural online retail sales in 2019 reached 1.7 trillion yuan, accounting for 16.1% of the total retail sales, and the growth rate was 19.1%, 2.6% higher than that of the total retail sales. In terms of agricultural products, online retail sales reached 397.5 billion yuan in 2019 (China's Ministry of Commerce 2020). Studies have shown that ICT and
rural E-commerce have generated positive externalities for food system transformation, including in regional governance (Liu 2017), social development and women's empowerment (Oreglia and Srinivasan 2016; Xu 2016; Yu and Cui 2019), employment (Qi et al. 2019), and household income (Cho and Tobias 2010; Zapata et al. 2016). The successful expansion of rural E-commerce in China and its potential for economic development and poverty alleviation has drawn a great deal of international attention. The World Bank applauded the development of Taobao villages in China as an instrument for poverty reduction and shared prosperity (World Bank 2016).

# 4 Challenges Facing Chinese Food Systems

Despite impressive achievements, Chinese food systems are facing a set of emerging challenges. They include declining productivity growth, the multiple burden of malnutrition, particularly micronutrient deficiency and overweight/obesity, natural resource degradation, continued rural-urban and regional inequality and increased food imports.

## 4.1 Declining Agricultural Productivity Growth and the Dominance of Smallholder Farms

While exhibiting rapid growth in the past, agricultural TFP slowed down in recent years. In addition, rising wages and rural labor shortages have caused the Chinese agricultural and food sector to lose competitiveness and profitability (Liu et al. 2018; Sheng et al. 2020). Between 2000 and 2018, the average relative comparative advantage index for feed grains, oil crops and meats (other than poultry) declined from 2.0 to around 0.8 (Rao et al. 2020).

Although ongoing land reforms, such as township land right transfers and “San-Quan-Fen-Zhi,” have facilitated land consolidation throughout the country since the mid-2000s (Huang and Ding 2016; Yi et al. 2019), small farms continue to dominate agricultural production. How to increase the agricultural productivity of small farms is still essential for national food security and the income equality of rural households (Sheng et al. 2019).

## 4.2 The Triple Burden of Malnutrition

The number of undernourished people has declined to almost zero, but it is a challenging task to tackle unbalanced diet and “hidden hunger” for better health. The deficiency of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, zinc, and calcium is still
<figure><img src="image_162.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 5** Percentage of obesity and overweight in total population, 2002–2016. (Source: WHO 2020)</figcaption></figure>

prevalent in both urban and rural areas, especially households with lower economic status (Yang et al. 2010). An estimated 21–34% of school-age children were classified as anemic in poorer western provinces, whereas the anemia rate among school-age children at the national level is estimated to be 6.1% (State Council 2020). Based on the World Bank (2016) estimate, micronutrient deficiency in China is expected to cause an annual loss of 0.2–0.4% of GDP, or US$2.5–5.0 billion per year.

Overweight and obesity rates are increasing—resulting from the excessive intake of fat, calories, and sugar, as well as physical inactivity. The prevalence of adult overweight and obesity in China jumped from 20.4% in 2000 to 34.3% in 2020 among males and from 21.1% to 30.1% among females (Fig. 5). Similarly, the estimated prevalence of overweight and obesity among children under the age of five increased from 5.3% to 6.8% between 1990 and 2020 (NBSC 2020).

An increasingly overweight and obese population brings with it a plethora of adverse health and economic consequences. The prevalence of adult diabetes—a chronic disease highly associated with diet—increased from 1% to more than 11.9% between 1980 and 2020 (NHFPC 2020). Hypertension, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases cost China nearly 4% of its GDP, and this figure is expected to double by 2025 if no preventative actions are taken (Popkin 2008).

## 4.3 Resource Scarcity and Degradation and Climate Change

A rapidly urbanizing and richer society puts pressure on increasingly scarce resources, including land, water and raw materials. In addition to the limited amount of land, land quality is equally worrisome. Nearly 70% of cultivated land in China is classified as low- or medium-fertility land (Jiao et al. 2018; Luan et al. 2020). Water resource constraints are severe as well. In 2019, China's per capita water resource was only 22% of the global average. In particular, the North China Plain's shallow water table has dropped from 0–3 meters below the surface in 1950 to a depth of 65 meters in recent years (Li et al. 2013; Zhao et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2019).
China is also vulnerable to climate-related risks (Cui 2018; Fang et al. 2018; Rosenzweig et al. 2020). China has been among the most disaster-prone countries in the world (Nie et al. 2010; Li et al. 2014), as agro-meteorological disasters alone affect 50 million hectares and 400 million people, and result in a loss of RMB 2000 billion (about 3% of GDP) annually (CNARCC 2011). Climate change will continue to intensify and the occurrence of extreme weather events and natural disasters associated with climate change will continue to increase (Wang et al. 2020; Rosenzweig et al. 2020).

## 4.4 Remaining Rural-Urban and Regional Inequality

While governments' focus on the agricultural and rural issues has shifted from “poverty reduction” to “rural revitalization,” rising rural-urban inequality continues to pose a policy challenge.

The most notable income disparities in China are between urban and rural areas and between coastal and inland regions. The relative ratio of urban to rural residents' per capita disposable income increased from 2.4 in 1978 to 3.0 in 2010. Although it declined in recent years, the ratio was still as high as 2.66 in 2019 (NBSC 2020). In addition to the coastal to inland gap in GDP per capita (Luo and Zhu 2008), the recent decade witnessed a widening gap in GDP per capita between Northern and Southern regions. In 2013, the gap in GDP per capita growth between Southern and Northern provinces was 0.3, but it increased to 1.9% in 2017 (Rozelle and Hell 2020).

Inequality in China is also reflected in wealth distribution, social protection, public service delivery, nutrition, and access to jobs and social programs across and within regions, especially between rural and urban areas. Increasing farmers' incomes at a faster rate will be one of the key policy goals for achieving smooth food system transformation.

## 4.5 Increasing Food Imports and Uncertainty in Global Markets

China's agricultural trade with the rest of the world has grown rapidly. From 1978 to 2018, China's agricultural trade increased from $5.45 billion to $216.8 billion, with an average annual growth rate of 10% (Rao et al. 2020). At the same time, trade deficit has continued to increase (Fig. 6). China has been running an agricultural trade deficit since 2003, and it has surged to $57.3 billion in 2018 (Uncomtrade 2020). The country imported 100 million tons of soybeans and 11.3 million tons of maize in 2020.
<figure><img src="image_163.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6** China's agricultural import and export (million US$), 1993–2020 Source: National Bureau of Statistics and China Customs</figcaption></figure>

While increasing trade has improved China's food security greatly, it may also bring uncertainty and risks, as seen during the China-USA trade disputes. Meanwhile, the persistent COVID-19 pandemic imposes additional uncertainty on international agricultural trade.

# 5 Future Strategies and Policies

## 5.1 New Vision Towards Better Food Systems

To facilitate food system transformation, China has recently released the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and “National Food and Nutrition Guideline toward 2035” under the National Strategy of Rural Revitalization. There are two important shifts:

* National development aims to establish “a well-off society in an all-round way” through the Rural Revitalization Strategy.

* Agriculture and rural development shifts its focus towards developing more efficient, green, inclusive and sustainable food systems.

## 5.2 National Food Policies Towards 2035

The following four major national food policies have been initiated to ensure successful food system transformations.

* To ensure food security as the bottom line by enforcing the strategies of “Store Grains (food) in Land” (or imposing red lines on cultivated land area and improving land productivity) and “Store Grains (food) in Technology” (or raising production capacity through technological innovation). By introducing
the “Food Security Law,” China is actively working to stabilize land areas to ensure grain production of 650 million tons (roughly equal to the 2018 level) by 2025.

* To facilitate the transformation of agricultural production and food consumption in safe, green and sustainable directions by developing ambitious action plans for achieving peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.

* To make an overall plan for increasing the resilience of agricultural and food systems, reducing the negative impact of external shocks such as natural disasters, climate change, plant and animal diseases (i.e., COVID-19), market uncertainties, etc.

* To develop new technologies (e.g., biotechnology and ICT) that increase agricultural productivity, developing digital agriculture and extending the value chain of agricultural and food products.

## 5.3 Recommendations: Strengthening Institutions, Policies and Investment Using a Food Systems Approach

* Given that there are a wide range of issues and multiple dimensions of food systems from production to consumption, the government should consider establishing a new leading group to coordinate policies and investments in food systems at the national and local levels. With this leading group, the following efforts by the government and their efficiencies will be further improved:

- Governance capacity to develop more healthy, efficient, green, inclusive and sustainable food systems in general, and addressing issues of small farm modernization, food safety, and scarcity of land and water in particular;

- Efforts to improve management of the emergency food supply in response to external shocks;

- Efforts to raise awareness of healthy diets and combat food loss and waste along the value chain.

* Enhance productivity of whole food systems through a more innovative science and technology system.

- Increase and prioritize agricultural R&D investments in breeding technologies for crops, livestock and fish, and in agricultural inputs (including farming machinery, fertilizers and chemicals, irrigation, processing, storage, etc.);

- Provide more incentives for the private sector to participate and encourage public-private partnership in agricultural R&D and extension activities.

* Further increase investment in restoring natural resources (e.g., land and water) and enhancing their productivity, as well as in the sustainable use of agricultural and food infrastructure (e.g., irrigation, transportation, etc.), and reduce the costs related to transportation, marketing and food consumption;
* Promote institutional reforms to facilitate land consolidation, help small farms that are moving up or those that are being abandoned, expand the machinery custom service, and develop more effective farmer cooperatives.

* Build a modern circulation system for agricultural products to improve inclusiveness, efficiency, nutrition, and food safety from “seed to fork.” In addition to investment, this requires further reforming agricultural markets, stabilizing food prices, expanding and enhancing the agricultural insurance system to mitigate natural and market risks, establishing the integrative protection system against pests and animal diseases, making full use of E-commerce to extend the value chain from sustainable production in the fields to consumption, and mainstreaming healthy and sustainable diets into the national development strategy.

* Promote green food system transformation and sustainable development to create a balance between agricultural growth and sustainable development.

- Invest in climate-smart agricultural technology and the subsequent adoption of sustainable agricultural practices;

- Enforce agro-environmental legislation and regulations to strengthen natural resource management and, in particular, to hold the red line of cultivating land for sustainable food production.

* Improve the social protection system. Major efforts should be made to enhance the current social protection system in rural areas and less developed regions.

* Strengthen international cooperation to improve food security in China, as well as in the world.

- Diversify agricultural imports from various countries and enhance trade along the Belt and Road countries;

- Enhance partnership with CGIAR to use science to transform Chinese and global food systems for achieving both human and planetary health;

- Participate in global governance around the agricultural and food trade;

- Increase investment in and share the development experience and agricultural technologies with other developing countries through South-South cooperation.

**Acknowledgements** We would like to thank Ms. Jiajia Wang and Ms. Zhuanlin Wang (SAAS, PKU) for their excellent research support.

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<figure><img src="image_164.png" /></figure>
# Key Areas of the Agricultural Science Development in Russia in the Context of Global Trends and Challenges

<figure><img src="image_165.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Nadezhda Orlova, Evgenia Serova, Vladimir Popov, and Marina Petukhova

## 1 Introduction

Current world food systems are entering a fundamentally new stage of technological development, which is called Agriculture 4.0 and is based on the introduction of “smart” solutions (robotics, “precision” agriculture, IoT (Internet of Things)), bio-technologies and alternative sources of raw materials. Elaboration of the scientific potential and introduction of innovative solutions are becoming critical to ensuring the competitiveness and further progressive development of the Russian agrifood sector, whereby the next decade of the Russian agrifood sector will be determined by the impact of the following trends:

* the transition to a new technological mode: in the future, the key factor in food production will be technologies that increase productivity and prevent losses;

* changes in value chains: the value added will increasingly be concentrated in knowledge-intensive sectors (genetics and breeding, the IT (Information technology) sector, industrial design and engineering);

* the growing influence of large integrator companies, which are the engines of introduction for innovative technologies;

* the shift in demand from traditional foods to products corresponding to the values of new generations, who prefer ready-to-eat food and products from improved and predetermined properties, and who also place increasing importance not only

N. Orlova (✉) · M. Petukhova

Department for Economics of Innovation in Agriculture, Institute for Agrarian Studies, HSE University, Moscow, Russia
e-mail: nvorlova@hse.ru

E. Serova

Agricultural Policy, HSE University, Moscow, Russia

V. Popov

Russian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre of Biotechnology RAS, Moscow, Russia
on the products' "benefits and safety," but also on their origin, the sustainability of their technologies and the ethics of their production;

* factors pointing to strengthened sustainability and product safety: strengthening and increasing the number of relevant standards and certification systems;

* transition to the knowledge economy: the process of digital transformation and growing robotization will radically change the employment structure.

In parallel with these trends, there are a number of challenges in the Russian agrifood sector, a timely response to which will allow domestic producers to enter new markets for products and technologies. Among the economic challenges, we can highlight the growing demand for food against the background of a slowdown in production growth with a simultaneous reduction in resources, and the concentration of the population in large cities, which leads to an aggravation of the problem of furnishing urbanized areas with an uninterrupted supply of food, as well as that of large-scale food waste and loss.

Despite the high level of availability of the country's basic resources (fertile soils, fresh water) and the average low negative effects of global warming, the development of the Russian agrifood sector is increasingly influenced by natural and climatic challenges and the subsequent decline in the agro-climatic potential of the planet; the reduction of natural breeds and variety diversity in agriculture; and the degradation of agricultural land, which threatens the sustainable development of the rural sector. All future areas of scientific research with the potential to have a key impact on the sustainable growth of the national agrifood sector should be based on needs related to climate change.<fnref n="1" />

One of the technological challenges involves spreading the principles of sustainable agrifood production and food consumption.

Agrifood production directly interacts with the environment, which creates environmental challenges including the loss of biological productivity of the world's oceans and NNN (non-legal, non-regulated, and non-reported (NNN)) fishing, the growth of animal waste, and the destruction of ecosystems as a result of the use of chemical plant protection products.

It is important to consider the value challenges in modern Russia, among which we can highlight the growing popularity of a healthy lifestyle and personalized diets, public resistance to the technologies of genetic engineering, modification and cloning, and the strengthening of public activity against cruelty to animals. Furthermore, social challenges such as the stratification of the population in terms of income and access to healthy food products and the lag in development between the rural areas and cities have a significant impact on the development of the Russian agrifood sector. The answer to these challenges should be the creation and implementation of innovative technologies in production. Thus, we can identify the following priority

<footnote n="1">¹Global Warming of 1.5 °C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty/V. Masson-Delmotte et al. IPCC, 2018.</footnote>
areas for the development of agricultural science in Russia in the context of the
national refraction of global trends and challenges.

## 2 Biotechnologies

The high relevance of biotechnology in the modern scientific and technological
landscape of the Russian agrifood sector is determined by its ability to respond to the
global challenges of our time, especially ensuring food security and addressing
environmental problems. In regard to the problems of man-made environmental
pollution, soil degradation, and the growing number of chronic diseases of the
country's population caused by the unfavorable environmental situation, the impor-
tance of biotechnologies continues to increase.

The biotechnology researches meet all of the requirements of Russia's sustainable
development in terms of ensuring food security, obtaining high-quality, environ-
mentally friendly products, processing agricultural waste, and restoring soil fertility.
The driver of the development of biotechnologies in agriculture is the increasingly
growing trends of Russian citizens maintaining a healthy lifestyle, seeking respon-
sible consumption and caring for the environment.

Currently, in Russia, the practice of processing waste into bio-products has
become most widespread in the production of solid biofuels (waste from crop
production and woodworking) and feed protein (waste from pulp, paper and alcohol
production, such as brewing and grain processing).

In addition, biotechnologies play an important role in the prevention and treat-
ment of infectious animal diseases. Without biotech, Russian agrifood production
will continue to be highly cost-ineffective and will lose out in regard to the
competitiveness of its products in world markets. Currently, the Russian market of
biotechnologies, in comparison to the European markets, is in a nascent state, and its
largest segments are biotechnological feed additives, immunobiological preparations
and biologics for crop production (the fastest growing segment). At the same time,
the dependence on imports in this market is very high – 83%. Therefore, it is
necessary to develop our own agrobiotechnologies in the following key areas:

2.1. Technologies for breeding plant varieties that are resistant to pests and adverse environmental factors. For example, selection methods based on the use of molecular markers, new-generation varieties, and hybrids that are resistant to drought, diseases, herbicides, and insect pests (Springer and Schmitz 2017).

2.2. Biological protection products, microbiological fertilizers and plant growth regulators that reduce the residues of the active substance in the final product, reduce the environmental burden on ecosystems and ensure the long-term competitiveness of the sector.

2.3. Biological products and feed additives in livestock. Development of the pro-
duction of feed protein and functional additives to improve feed quality and
increase productivity in livestock, as well as technologies that reduce the use of feed antibiotics.

2.4. Technologies for processing animal waste. With the help of bacteria, the processing of organic waste can be significantly sped up, reducing both the cost of creating organic fertilizers and the environmental damage from agricultural production. Microbiological conversion allows us to process various waste products into feed protein with improved qualities.

2.5. Biological products for livestock. Creation of immunobiological medicines for veterinary use employing local strains of microorganisms that have been isolated in Russia.

2.6. Technologies of soil bioremediation and biofertilization. The introduction of bacteria into the soil can significantly improve its quality and productivity.

2.7. Technologies for the deep processing of feedstock used in the production of bioplastics.

# 3 Precision Agriculture

Russia's significant lag behind the leading countries in terms of productivity and relatively high volatility (primarily in crop production), as well as the need to ensure the global competitiveness of the Russian agrifood sector and reduce food losses, requires the activation of a transition to a new technological stage, including the introduction of “smart” technologies that make agriculture more accurate and controlled and that are focused on making decisions based on the needs of individual animals or plants.

In crop production, the use of precision farming technologies allows us to optimize the consumption of fertilizers and plant protection products and increase crop yields. In livestock, RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technologies make it possible to obtain the maximum amount of information about the livestock population, including its accounting, movement, feeding, vaccination, etc. (Ustundag and Cevikcan 2018). Given the limited resources available, the use of digital technologies is essential to improving the efficiency of agrifood production. The main areas of digitalization of the Russian agrifood sector include:

3.1. Development of precision farming technologies based on IoT (Internet of Things). Obtaining real-time data on plants, animals, machinery, soil, and air allows us to make more informed decisions about production (Marchiol 2018).

3.2. Technologies of digital systems that operate with “big data” and allow us to make more informed decisions that take into account weather forecasts, the probability of diseases, the state of soils and plants, yield estimates, and many other factors within a single model. They also allow us to design agricultural systems based on the principles of biologization, resource conservation, and environmental and sanitary-epidemiological safety.
3.3. Technologies of automated agricultural machinery and integrated management systems based on a combination of sensor (IoT) technologies, telematics, robotics and artificial intelligence.

# 4 Selection and Genetics in Crop Production and Livestock

The recent discoveries in the field of genome research and the introduction of post-genomic technologies are already radically changing the face of world agriculture and creating new factors of competitiveness. Russia lags behind in the field of both research and implementation of modern technologies of genetics and breeding, which determines a high degree of dependence on foreign genetic material, which risks reducing the global competitiveness of the Russian agricultural sector. Russia's import dependence on corn seeds reached 62%, 73% for sunflower, and 98% for sugar beet. Import dependence on breeding material of cattle and poultry is also high. When creating new genetic lines of meat breeds, only imported breeding genetic material is used.

The strengthening of selection and genetic research in these industries is one of the areas of highest priority for their development. The main topics of research work in this field include:

4.1. Creation of databases of genetic resources that form the basis of knowledge about hereditary variability and are a reference for the identification of new mutations and a source of valuable source material for breeding.

4.2. Development and implementation of genomic assessment tools and creation of Russian varieties and hybrids, as well as pure lines of highly productive animal breeds that correspond to the real economic and agro-climatic conditions of the agrifood sector.

4.3. Methods of accelerated selection (marker-oriented, microclonal reproduction in vitro), which significantly reduce the time of breeding of new varieties and hybrids of plants.

4.4. Technologies for breeding plant varieties that are resistant to pests and adverse environmental factors. With the help of biotechnological innovations, for example, selection methods based on the use of molecular markers, new-generation varieties and hybrids are created that are resistant to drought, diseases, herbicides, and insect pests.

# 5 Food Processing Technologies

Popularization of healthy food has become one of the strategic national tasks of Russia. In the period from 2010 to 2018, the number of people suffering from obesity in Russia almost doubled, exceeding two million people (1.4% of the population). At the same time, the highest specific rate of obesity within the
population is observed in the cohorts of children (0–14 years) and adolescents (15–17 years): 375 and 763 per 100 thousand, respectively (for comparison, it is 304 per 100 thousand for the entire population). In the period from 2010 to 2020, the number of patients diagnosed with diabetes increased by 61% to 5.1 million people. 63% of deaths in Russia are associated with diseases arising from poor nutrition.

At the same time, the transition to a healthy diet in Russia is favored by the current socio-demographic structure, which is marked by a high level of urbanization (up to 75%), the share of the educated population (over 60% have a tertiary education), and the level of income in the largest urban agglomerations comparable to most countries in Eastern Europe. But the results of sociological research also show a rapidly growing interest of Russian consumers in healthy food in a significant proportion of the rest of the population, which is already guided by the relevant principles in the choice of products.

The following areas of scientific research are critical from the point of view of further development of food systems in Russia:

5.1. Biotechnologies for the production of food additives and enzyme products based on methods of microbial synthesis, including the use of mutant and genetically modified microorganisms; the creation of innovative domestic probiotics and starter cultures for the food industry; medical and biological studies of their safety (Ordovas et al. 2018).

5.2. Creation of mass consumption products enriched with essential nutrients and functional and specialized (therapeutic and preventive) food products that allow for correcting violations of the nutritional status, preventing the occurrence of certain diseases, promoting the growth and development of children, and slowing down the aging of the body.

5.3. New sources of protein derived from the biomass of microorganisms based on biotechnologies that allow for the conversion of low-value waste into protein products and components with high added value. Scientific support for a comprehensive sanitary and epidemiological assessment of the quality and safety of sources of their production, as well as assessment of the impact of these products and secondary products of their processing on the human environment, including microbiological and toxicological-hygienic studies.

5.4. Development of food engineering to create a new generation of probiotic products designed to maintain and preserve the normal human microbiota, so as to promote the formation of a healthy food market in Russia.

5.5. Technologies for the production of synthetic food products with high protein value from non-traditional natural food raw materials. Development of methods for the deep processing of raw materials of plant and animal origin, based on microbial synthesis and biocatalysis. Implementation of biotechnological methods for low-waste and resource-saving production, such as the processing of food industry waste and the recycling of food packaging, including non-food products.

5.6. Biotechnologies for the establishment of organic agriculture and the obtainment of organic food products, taking into consideration the requirements and
restrictions imposed on the use of fertilizers, plant protection products, and veterinary drugs.

A separate segment of the agrifood sector in Russia is the fishing industry. Russia has rich aquatic biological resources and is one of the world leaders in terms of fish and seafood exports. The share of exports from the volume of production in physical terms over the past five years has varied from 38.9% to 41.0%. Fish products, as a carrier of animal protein with a unique set of amino acids, fatty acids and vitamins not found in such an amount and variety in cereals, meat or other products, take a leading place in ensuring a balanced and healthy diet. Marine pharmacology and biotechnological methods of aquaculture are the most promising areas of research and development in this industry for Russia.

# 6 Aquaculture

The reduction of fish stocks and their species diversity due to overfishing and water pollution are problems that, in the near future, may become a threat to food security, both for Russia and for many other countries of the world (Barang et al. 2014). Therefore, the main priority of national legislation in this area has become the preservation of aquatic biological resources before their use – the precautionary principle surrounding the use of aquatic biological resources and the assignment of a quota of biological water resources to enterprises. The Russian fishing industry has received guarantees of the initial production resource. Therefore, to preserve the aquatic biological resources of our country, it is necessary to develop aquaculture in the following areas:

6.1. Development of recycled aquaculture (fish farming in completely closed, controlled conditions). Water recycling in aquaculture farms can ensure high and stable production of aquaculture products with a lower risk of disease. At the same time, modern methods of recycling significantly reduce the adverse impact on the environment compared to traditional methods of fish farming.

6.2. Creation of specialized feed for aquaculture, with high levels of protein, lipids, metabolic energy and vitamins, that is also resistant in aggressive aquatic environments.

# 7 Methods for Reducing Food Waste and Loss

Reducing food waste and loss plays an important role in the development of sustainable food systems around the world. However, Russia has not yet formed a general conceptual view of this problem; the dangers associated with food waste and loss, which go beyond environmental pollution or contamination, are not on the agenda. There is no cooperation among the nation's government, science and business
sectors regarding food waste and loss, which is why there have been practically no scientific developments in this direction; existing solutions or technologies for reducing food waste and loss are local, small in scale, and not supported by the government or society as a whole (Global Food Losses and Food Waste 2011).

In addition, there are no reliable statistics on the volume of food waste and loss in Russia. There is a problem of data discrepancy: according to official statistics, the volume of food waste and loss in Russia is 0.6% of food production on average; the expert community considers these indicators to be underestimated by tenfold and points out that, in Russia as a whole, the situation regarding food waste and loss is no better than the global average, which is 30-40% of total production.

Unfortunately, in Russia, this problem is poorly studied and the focus is mainly on the disposal of food waste, rather than ways to reduce loss and waste in the process of production, processing and transportation. In this regard, it is necessary to conduct research in the following areas:

7.1. Development of methods for calculating food waste and loss throughout the entire food supply chain.

7.2. A survey of the food supply chains themselves to identify and classify the main causes of food waste and loss at all stages, as well as to develop methods for reducing them.

7.3. Development of innovative methods for storing fruit products in a controlled atmosphere.

7.4. Study of the use of methods of ionizing radiation treatment of agricultural raw materials to improve their shelf life and quality.

In addition, it is necessary to identify barriers to the introduction of advanced technologies, including restrictions present in the regulatory framework, as well as issues of costs and payback for the use of these technologies within a particular enterprise.

# 8 Closed Farming Systems

Russia has huge resources: our country accounts for about 10% of the global arable land fund, and it is one of the world leaders in terms of fresh water reserves. However, these resources are distributed across the country: a significant part of the agricultural area has low fertility and is located in the zone of risky farming. In turn, the main reserves of fresh water are concentrated in the northern part of the country, which is not suitable for agricultural development, while the southern agricultural regions face the threat of a shortage of water for irrigation.

In addition, Russia is a country with a high level of urbanization (up to 75%), while almost 25% of Russians live in cities with a population of more than one million people. The largest urban agglomerations are located at a considerable distance from the key centers of agricultural production and are increasingly competing with local centers for land and water resources (World Urbanization Prospects
2019). Another 2.4 million people live in the Arctic zone, which is dependent on external food supplies. Providing residents of megacities and remote regions with food products now requires the involvement of significant logistics resources, creates an additional environmental burden, and makes a significant contribution to the volume of food losses.

The transition to agricultural production in closed systems, independent of external agro-climatic factors, is also one of the most relevant and promising directions for the development of agricultural science in the context of Russia's Arctic ambitions and the implementation of long-term space programs.

8.1. Vertical farms – creation and improvement of crop production technologies in vertically arranged automated complexes with artificial lighting, heating and air conditioning, closed water circulation and sterile air. Vertical farm technologies will increase the availability of high-quality fresh produce in cities and remote areas and eliminate the seasonal factor, as well as significantly reduce the environmental burden and ensure local food security.

8.2. Non-ground crop production – hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics, as well as advanced technologies derived from them (including bioponics and hyponics). Technologies of non-ground crop production allow us to (a) complete the transition of vertical farms to closed systems that do not use traditional agricultural resources; (b) level the weight and size restrictions so that products can be delivered to autonomous objects: ships, Arctic stations, spacecraft, etc.

8.3. Robotic "smart" greenhouses – technologies for integrated monitoring and management of microclimate, lighting, fertigation, and plant protection. Also, automation of processes and manipulations with plants. Technologies allow us to: (a) increase productivity and reduce the costs associated with the use of manual labor; (b) improve the quality of decision-making; (c) increase the level of availability of products for end users.

8.4. Construction of specialized greenhouse complexes adapted to permafrost conditions to provide fresh food to the population of the Far North of Russia.

# 9 Deep Processing of Agricultural and Fishery Feedstock

To increase the sustainability of the Russian agrifood sector, it is very important to increase the depth of processing of agricultural feedstock, for which there is still a significant gap with global agricultural producers.

The need for the development of deep processing of grain is caused by record harvests of grain crops in Russia, which, in recent years, have led to production volumes that are increasing faster than their consumption in related industries. Every year, about 40% of the country's grain reserves remain unused, which requires expanding the areas of its domestic use, strengthening the potential opportunities for entering international markets.
In addition, the intensive development of livestock in Russia in recent years has provided a significant increase in demand for feed amino acids, which the domestic deep processing industry is not able to meet.

On the scale of the world market of fish and other products from aquatic biological resources, the fisheries complex retains its role as one of the key suppliers of feedstock of the most valuable and popular types of aquatic biological resources. The main buyers of domestic fish and other products from aquatic biological resources are processing enterprises located in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region and the European Union. In some cases, the products produced for final consumption are delivered to the consumer without any indication of the Russian origin of the fish. Thus, Russian suppliers of fish products are deprived of competitive influence on the final sales price and do not participate in the formation of market demand, and also do not receive a significant part of the added value in terms of deep processing, distribution and marketing of fish and other products from aquatic biological resources. Therefore, within the framework of the deep processing of fishery feedstock, the main task is to introduce modern biotechnological methods into the practice of fish-processing enterprises that can provide cost-effective production of a wide range of food ingredients and valuable food products with high added value from hydrobionts. The production of fish meal and fat, fish feed and fish oil deep processing products has the highest growth rates in the global fish industry, due to the need to meet the growing mass demand for products containing protein.

The priorities in research and development in this industry for Russia are:

9.1. Deep processing of agricultural feedstock for the production of feed amino acids, glucose and glucose-fructose syrups, and starch.

9.2. Deep processing of low-value products from the processing of hydrobionts of the fishing industry into products with a high content of free amino acids and lower peptides that have good functional and nutritional properties for use in medicine, microbiology, and the food and feed industry. Extraction of fish oil from secondary feedstock to create functional food products based on it.

The implementation of these directions will allow for the transition from feedstock export-oriented production to the production of products with a deep degree of processing for both domestic consumption and export.

# 10 Sustainable Development of Agricultural Production and Rural Areas

In order to prevent the destructive consequences of the aggressive intensification of agricultural production in Russia, it is necessary now to translate it into the principles of sustainable development, which are based on the optimal use of limited natural resources, the creation of a “green” economy and the preservation of vast rural areas of our country (Dietz et al. 2018).
To minimize the negative impact of aggressive intensification on the environ-
ment, it is necessary to develop research and development in the following areas:

10.1. Technologies of organic agriculture, including methods with minimal impact on the soil, mechanical and biological weed control, and the use of sideral fertilizers and biological products, ensuring a closed cycle of agricultural production "crop production-livestock-crop production."

10.2. Integrated plant protection, safe for the environment and reducing harm to the human organism. Its goal is to maintain a balance between the economic efficiency of production and the environment.

10.3. Soil protection and resource-saving agriculture, which is based on the princi-
ples of zero tillage and diversification of crop rotation through various types of
crops.

10.4. Biological reclamation technologies for increasing soil fertility and preventing water and wind erosion with the help of grass and woody vegetation.

10.5. Development of bioremediation – a complex of methods for cleaning water, soil and the atmosphere using the metabolic potential of biological objects.

10.6. Development of models for restoring biodiversity and soil productivity.

10.7. Technologies for an adaptive landscape system of agriculture.

11 Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control

In the context of globalization and the expansion of commodity turnover between Russia and other countries, the system of veterinary and phytosanitary control, the purpose of which is to prevent harmful organisms from entering the country, is becoming increasingly important. The problem is aggravated by the negative effect of climate change, against which pests and pathogens of plants and animals are beginning to spread more and more actively beyond their natural habitats (Clapper 2011). The increased risks of epizootic and epiphytotic situations for Russia are associated with the vast territories located in the European and Asian parts of the continent.

The costs of combating them and the resulting food losses can cause significant
harm to Russian agriculture and public well-being.

In Russia, about 40 million cases of infectious diseases are registered annually among farm animals, while economic losses from diseases amount to 30%, and the amount of damage is more than $200 million. The following measures need to be adopted:

11.1. Blockchain technologies for tracking the entire path of food production, processing and sale.

11.2. Creation of phytosanitary and veterinary databases and digital platforms for analyzing and predicting the spread of animal and plant diseases.

11.3. Development of systems for the monitoring, diagnosis and prevention of plant and animal diseases.
# 12 Technologies of the Logging Industry

The technologies of the logging industry are extremely important for Russia, which has more than 20% of the world's forest reserve. The forest complex occupies an important place in the country's economy, due to the performance of important environmental protection and environmental-forming functions. The forest is one of the most valuable renewable natural resources. Such global significance of the Russian forest multiplies the country's responsibility for its conservation and reproduction, especially since it is an ecological framework for our entire planet, a colossal resource for the economy, for economic growth, and for improving the well-being and health of our citizens. To do this, it is necessary to develop research and development aimed at improving the efficiency of forest plantation management, preserving and reproducing forest genetic resources, and protecting forests from various adverse factors, such as with the following:

12.1. Technologies for the protection of forests from fires, pests, diseases and other adverse factors. The use of biological means of protection will help to contain the spread of new dangerous pests and phytopathogens of phytophages in the forests, which negatively affect fire safety there.

12.2. Technologies for predicting the spread and dynamics of the most dangerous pest foci using remote monitoring systems.

12.3. Selection of the main forest-forming species, aimed at accelerating growth, breeding new hybrids and varieties, creating biotechnological forms of trees with specified characteristics, and fostering micro-planar reproduction of genetically valuable tree forms.

12.4. Technologies for processing larch and dry wood, technologies for multi-layer and alternative molding in the production of paper and cardboard, research into the properties of wood-based materials for their use in building, and development and introduction of new wood-based materials through the deep chemical and mechanical processing of feedstock.

The only way to preserve and increase forest wealth is through the sustainable management of forests, preserving their biological diversity, productivity, resilience, viability, and ability to perform important environmental, economic, and social functions at the local, national, and global levels in the present and future.

# 13 Conclusions

The range of key areas for the development of agricultural science in Russia is very wide and varied, due to the presence of huge potential, both natural and climatic, and because of the human capital of our country. The main goal of all presented research areas will be to provide the population of Russia and the whole world with high-quality food products.
We should look and think one-step ahead to avoid missing the unique “windows of opportunity” for the industry that arise when technological patterns change.

It is necessary to move beyond the idea of agriculture as a very conservative industry of traditional products and technologies, to overcome isolationism in the field of scientific and technological development. The current tasks of catching up in terms of development and strengthening food security should evolve into a higher-order goal: the transition to innovative development, in which we build an effective system for generating new original ideas and supporting their transformation into specific solutions, products and technologies. The scientific and technological development of Russia's agrifood sector in the future will be based on sustainability combined with innovations. The economic, social and environmental efficiency of agribusiness is possible only with the introduction of innovative technologies.

**Acknowledgements** The authors express special gratitude to the experts who took part in the discussion of the most promising developmental areas for agricultural science and technology in Russia and in the world: Alina Osmakova, Executive Director of the Technology Platform BioTech 2030, Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, Maxim Markovich, Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Agricultural Export Development, Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Irina Donnik, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irina Chernukha, Leading Researcher, Federal Scientific Center for Food Systems named after V.M. Gorbatov, Mikhail Glubokovsky, Scientific adviser, Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, Viktor Tutelyan, Director, Federal Research Centre of nutrition, biotechnology and food safety, Alla Kochetkova, Head of the Laboratory of food biotechnologies and specialized products, Federal Research Centre of nutrition, biotechnology and food safety, Petr Tolmachev, Head of the Department of World Economy of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

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The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

<figure><img src="image_166.png" /></figure>
# Food System in India. Challenges, Performance and Promise

<figure><img src="image_167.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Ashok Gulati, Raj Paroda, Sanjiv Puri, D. Narain, and Anil Ghanwat

## 1 Introduction

Looking into the future, towards 2030 and beyond, the challenge of feeding India's growing population is going to be a major task. According to the UN Population Prospects (2019), India will be the world's most populous country by 2027, surpassing China. Currently, its population is about 17.7% of the total world population, and it will increase from 1.38 billion (2020) to 1.5 billion in 2030 and 1.64 billion in 2050 (United Nations 2019). By 2030, 600 million Indians are expected to live in urban areas and will require a continuous supply of safe and healthy food from hinterlands. This challenge is further compounded by limited availability and the deteriorating quality of natural resources such as land, water, and air. On top of this is the challenge of climate change, with rising temperatures and greater frequency and intensity of droughts in western and southern India and floods in northern and north-eastern India (IPCC 2018).

A. Gulati (✉)

Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi, India
e-mail: agulati115@gmail.com

R. Paroda

Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Secretary DARE, Government of India,
New Delhi, India

Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS), New Delhi, India

S. Puri

National Council on Agriculture, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), New Delhi, India

ITC Limited (India), Kolkata, India

D. Narain

Bayer Crop Science India and Global Sponsor, Bayer Smallholder Farming, Thane, India

A. Ghanwat

Shetkari Sanghatana (Farmers' Union), Kolhapur, India
Despite India’s economic progress over the past two decades, regional inequality and malnutrition problems persist. Simultaneously, trends in overweight and obesity, along with micronutrient deficiency, portend an emerging public health challenge. There is a need to examine the interactions among India’s economic development, agricultural production and nutrition through the lens of a “food systems approach.”

Structurally, Indian agriculture is dominated by small and marginal land holdings. About 86.2% of holdings are less than 2 hectares (ha) that account for 47.3% of operated area (Agriculture Census Division 2015–16). And there has been a continuous decline in the average land holding size, from 2.3 ha in 1970–71 to 1.08 ha in 2015–16. This raises a fundamental policy question: how to design a food system that ensures not only sufficient availability of food, feed and fibre for India’s large population, but also good nutrition, and that is environmentally sustainable and globally competitive? Achieving all of these goals seems a tall order for any government. But the efforts are on, not by government alone, but also by the large private sector, through long-term multi-stakeholder partnerships. When such partnerships are organised around crop value chain clusters, economies of scale are achieved, thereby improving efficiency and competitiveness. This has resulted in several successes, yet there are still many challenges, and one needs to continuously innovate with new technologies, institutions, and policies for better outcomes. This chapter attempts to do precisely this, dwelling on the holistic approach towards India’s food system with a special focus on three aspects:

(i) Is India producing sufficient food, feed and fibre for its population in a globally competitive and environmentally sustainable manner?

(ii) Is India marketing its food with low intermediation costs and low food losses? This refers to post-harvest value chains, from farm to fork.

(iii) Is India producing a sufficient amount of nutritious and safe food for consumers?

We hope that the evidence-based research cited in this chapter will help policymakers make more pragmatic decisions that help in achieving the above goals. Let us address each one of these in some detail, looking at their challenges and their performance in the recent past, and what promise they hold for 2030 and beyond.

# 2 India's Food System

## 2.1 Producing Sufficient Food Efficiently with Environmental Sustainability

India is largely a rural economy, with 66% of the country’s population living in rural areas (World Development Indicator 2019) and agriculture being the mainstay of this section of the population. The sector employs the largest share of India’s
working population – about 42% (National Statistical Office 2020) - and contributes 16.5% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). However, of the total geographical area (of 328.7 million hectares (mha)), nearly half is arable (159.7 mha) and only 42.6% (about 140 mha) is actually cultivated, a number that has remained static over decades, thereby reflecting no scope for horizontal expansion. Hence, in order to feed India's growing population from limited resources, an increase in crop productivity is imperative! This requires investments in agri-R&D and extension (both by the public and the private sectors) and an enabling policy ecosystem. India needs to invest at least 1% of its agri-GDP in agri-R&D against the current level of 0.39% (NIAP 2017). In fact, India's agri-food policy of late has been highly skewed towards subsidies instead of investments (Gulati et al. 2018). In FY 2020-21, as per the Union budget, India's expenditure on agri-R&D (ICAR budget) was a meagre INR 7762 crore (about USD 1.1 billion) (Government of India 2021a). Thus, there lies a huge scope for achieving higher growth momentum, as the marginal returns from expenditures on agricultural research are almost 5 to 10 times higher than through subsidies (Fan et al. 2007). If agricultural growth is to provide food security at a national level, then the expenditure on agri-R&D needs at least to be doubled immediately (Paroda 2019).

To better understand the role of investments and enabling policies in our agri-food system, let us peep into the past and see how India transformed from being largely a food deficit nation to a food surplus one, particularly in the case of staples (wheat and rice), milk, poultry, fish, and, lately, cotton. Lessons from the past will certainly help in defining a clear roadmap towards 2030 and beyond.

### 2.1.1 Lessons from the Past

Who could have imagined that India, after the Bengal Famine of 1943 that claimed around 3.0 million deaths, not from disease, but starvation (Maitra 1991), and having lived in a situation of 'ship to mouth' during the mid-1960s, with heavy dependence on wheat imports under PL 480 food aid (USA), could one day emerge to be the largest exporter of rice? It also had food grain stocks of 97 million metric tonnes (MMT) in June 2020, almost 2.5 times the buffer stock norms of the country. All of this happened through an infusion of new technology (wheat and rice varieties that are high yielding, dwarf, photo-insensitive and responsive to high inputs) in partnership with CIMMYT and IRRI during the mid-1960s, technology that was then further improved and expanded over time through a domestic network of research and extension under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and State Agricultural Universities (SAUS) (Dalrymple 1975; ICAR 2017). Along with said new technology (such as high yielding variety (HYV) seeds), irrigation, fertilisers, and positive price policy played critical roles in ushering in the green revolution in India. This is a lesson for many developing countries in Africa and Asia that have small holdings and are still aiming to have a green revolution.
<figure><img src="image_168.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1** Milk production in India and the US, and per capita availability in India from 1950–51 to 2019–20. (Source: FAOSTAT 2019 and DoAHD&F 2019)</figcaption></figure>

Along with the green revolution, the country witnessed significant transformation in the dairy sector during the 1970s through the mid-1990s. Verghese Kurien spearheaded 'Operation Flood,' which transformed the system of milk collection from smallholders under a co-operative structure, homogenising, pasteurising and distributing it to mega-cities as far as 1800 kilometres away in bulk coolers designed to keep the temperature controlled at 3.9 degrees Celsius, through an organised retail network. Subsequently, de-licensing of the dairy sector, in 2002, encouraged private enterprises in a big way, leading to accelerated growth in production and processing. As a result, India emerged as the world's largest milk producer, with 208.0 MMT in 2020/21, up from 17.0 MMT in 1950–51 (Fig. 1), leaving the United States of America (99 MMT) and China (45 MMT) way behind. And all of this was achieved through smallholders with 3–4 cows or buffalo. India's per capita milk availability also increased from 110 grams/day in 1973–74 to 407 grams/day in 2019–20 (DoAHD&F 2019), and an estimated 428 grams/day in 2020–21. However, India's productivity of dairy animals is still far below the global standard of 20 litres plus per day (indigenous cows 2.8 litres per day, crossbreeds 7.5 litres, and buffalo 5.2 litres). Improving milk productivity through genetic enhancement and better fodder and feed availability are the ways forward! This is another major lesson for smallholder-dominated agricultural economies as to what smallholders can do with the right institutional innovations, including needed policy support and building value chains from farm to fork.

Besides dairy, India's poultry sector also witnessed revolutionary transformation from backyard poultry farming to an organised commercial poultry industry, largely driven by the private sector. What was particularly successful was the indigenous pure-line breeding that used germplasm of a foreign strain, leading to genetic improvement and the spread of vertical integration and contract farming practices among the small and marginal holders. As a result, the sector experienced the fastest
average annual growth, reaching 9.2% between 2000/01 and 2018/19, and emerged as the third largest producer of eggs (103.3 billion) and the fifth largest producer of broiler meat (4 MMT) in the world (2018/19).

In 2002, the introduction and commercialisation of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton (the only genetically modified crop in India so far), along with huge investments in R&D by private seed companies, ushered in the famous Gene Revolution in the agricultural sector. This led to a breakthrough in cotton production, rising from 13.6 million bales in 2002/03 to 37.5 million bales in 2019/20 (Directorate of Economics and Statistics 2020), with India surpassing China (in 2014/15) to become the largest cotton-producer in the world. The effect of fertilisers, Bt technology and insecticides contributed to 60, 23 and 17 percent of cotton yield, respectively, in India (Paroda and Joshi 2017). The benefit of Bt technology for cotton is estimated to be USD 84.7 billion (cumulatively between 2002–03 to 2018–19) through savings in imports of cotton, as well as extra exports of raw cotton and yarn compared to the business-as-usual scenario.

Over the last five decades, India has experienced an impressive growth trajectory from a food scarce country to a food sufficient one, and then to a food surplus one. All of these revolutions in agricultural production were triggered due to a scaling of innovations, well supported by the right incentives and institutions. Today, India is a net exporter of agricultural produce. As a result, agricultural exports, in nominal US dollar terms, have increased significantly from USD 6.1 billion in 2001/02 to USD 43.6 billion in 2013/14. Imports also increased during this time, and stood at USD 18.9 billion in 2013–14. Thus, there was a net surplus in agri-trade accounting to the tune of USD 24.7 billion in 2013–14, indicating that Indian agriculture has become globally competitive. But after 2013–14, exports slipped down a bit as global prices took a downward turn while imports kept increasing. As a result, the net surplus on the agri-trade front was down to about USD 16 billion in 2018–19. Overall, agricultural trade (exports plus imports) as a percentage of agricultural GDP showed an increase from 4.7% in 1990/91 to 20.9% in 2012/13, and thereafter, it slipped from this peak to 15.1% in 2018/19.

## 2.1.2 Using Lessons of the Past to Create Opportunities for the Future

The lessons from the past always hold promise for what can be done in the future. HYVs and hybrid seed technologies, along with accelerated breeding programmes and vibrant R&D efforts by research institutions and companies both in India and globally, have improved crop yields in corn, vegetables, rice, pearl millet and other crops. However, increased crop productivity is no longer the only end objective today. India's agri-food system is progressing towards an ecosystem-based food system, focusing on end-to-end solutions from agri-inputs to agronomic advisory to market linkages and easy access to finance, credit, etc. Simply increasing crop productivity won't work if farmers don't get the right remunerative prices for their produce (Narain 2020). Therefore, outcome-based value chains such as 'Better Life
Farming' are also providing additional income opportunities through rural agri-entrepreneurship (Better Life Farming 2020).

The Bt cotton Gene Revolution was a game-changer for Indian cotton. Now, we need to expand it to other crops such as corn and oilseeds (soybean and canola) and reduce India's dependence on edible oil imports (TAAS 2014; Paroda and Joshi 2017). This requires the right agri-infrastructure, accelerated market reforms and an enabling policy framework that is focused on empowering farmers and protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs).

Another area where both the government and the private sector are making significant inroads is digital farming using artificial intelligence, drones, the Internet of Things (IoT), remote sensing, etc. Very recently, the Indian Government used e-locust tab and e-locust M to control a locust attack in desert areas of Rajasthan. The technology provided a precise location (GPS), as well as recording the data, which was useful for forecasting, forewarning and taking control measures. Public and private sector are investing in capacity-building to encourage wider adoption of new and existing technologies among smallholder farmers, such as water-efficient rice through hybrid seeds and direct seeded rice (DSR) (NITI 2019). Similarly, ITC Limited has expanded its extensive e-Choupal network, which is working with four million farmers to launch a 'phygital' system, with a crop-agnostic integrated solution framework that will synergistically aggregate digital technologies to empower farmers.

Sustainable and protected agricultural practices like soilless farming systems (hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics) and polyhouse farming systems are also making headway. The government is aiming to increase the area (~2,00,000 ha) under protected cultivation by a factor of 4 in the next 4–5 years, another option for vertical farming and enhanced income to attract youths (including women) to agriculture (Paroda 2018, 2019).

## 2.2 Increasing Pressure on the Environment and Climate Change

Though India has largely been able to achieve much-needed food, feed and fibre security, which can inspire many developing countries, it has come at the cost of environmental degradation, especially in regard to water and land, in some states of India. The government is realising that longstanding policies of subsidies for agriculture inputs (e.g., power and fertilisers) and price support (MSP) with open-ended procurement of rice and wheat are inflicting significant damage on the environment. For instance, fertiliser subsidies (nitrogenous fertilisers are subsidised for almost 75% of their cost) have resulted in massive overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers, leading to an imbalanced use of nutrients and a decline in soil fertility, as well as the pollution of local water bodies. Moreover, widespread deficiency of secondary and
<figure><img src="image_169.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2** Status of groundwater level in India, 2017. (Source: CGWB 2017)</figcaption></figure>

micro-nutrients such as sulphur, zinc, iron and manganese has affected soil produc-
tivity adversely (Government of India 2016). On the other hand, power subsidies
have resulted in an alarming overuse of scarce groundwater, especially in north-west
India. This issue is poised to become one of country's big challenges in the years to
come, unless jointly prioritised through good policies and corrective measures by the
central and state governments.

Figure 2 presents an assessment of the groundwater table in 6584 units (blocks) across states in India by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) in 2017. It revealed that, overall, 1034 units are ‘over-exploited,’ 253 are ‘critical’ and 681 are ‘semi-critical’ (CGWB 2017). The over-exploited areas are mostly in three parts of the country, namely, north-western India (Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh), western India (Rajasthan and Gujarat) and southern peninsular India (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana). Hence, these regions would need corrective water use approaches like micro-irrigation and enabling policies around cropping systems and water use efficiency (WUE).

In addition to the undesirable consequences of agricultural intensification, climate
change is another daunting challenge for achieving overall food-feed-fibre security.
As per the predictions of the IPCC, India will face greater frequency and intensity of
droughts in the Deccan plateau states of the west and southern peninsula, and floods
in the Himalayan foothills from melting glaciers in the Himalayas. With tempera-
tures rising by one degree Celsius, estimates are that wheat production will drop by
at least 5 MMT, and, if temperatures rise further beyond 2 °C, the losses will increase
rapidly (IPCC 2018).

Several efforts are on to address the issue of sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture. The government and the private sector are joining hands to create climate-resilient villages, saving water in agriculture use through better demand
side efficiency, and augmenting water resources through water harvesting to recharge groundwater. ITC, e.g., has built more than 20,000 water harvesting structures through 44 partnerships (PPP mode) covering 1.2 million acres. It has also extended its focused 'climate smart villages' initiative to more than 600 villages, which have increased yields by about 15%, incomes by about 30% and cut down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 30% (SustainCERT 2020). It is being argued that, to protect India's agri-resource endowment, there is a need to switch from highly subsidised input price policy (power, water, fertilisers), as well as MSP/FRP policy for paddy, wheat and sugarcane, to more direct income support policies linked to the saving of soil, water, nutrients and the improvement of air quality. Such shifts will reduce the inefficient use of fertilisers and ensure sustainable use of scarce water supplies, and therefore will be more equitable and environmentally sustainable (OECD-ICRIER 2018).

For agriculture to be sustainable in the long term, it needs to go hand in hand with farm incomes and farmer prosperity. Otherwise, farmers will not take sustainability issues seriously. Globally, several players are working on sustainable agriculture models that also support income generation for farmers. The opportunities to adopt Carbon capture models to reduce carbon emissions and create additional income streams for farmers is currently being introduced by several companies, including Bayer, in the US and South America. This could be a great opportunity for small-holder farmers in India and other smallholder countries in Asia and Africa, too (Bayer 2020; World Bank 2012).

As far as the challenge of climate change is concerned, the government is putting greater emphasis on adaptation through the development of climate-resilient seeds. The ICAR has identified 400 climate-resilient germplasm lines and 58 genotypes with high water and nutrient use efficiency. It is also developing and demonstrating climate-resilient technologies under "National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA)."<fnref n="1" /> Further, it is increasing the area under micro-irrigation technologies for water preservation, and promoting innovative rice cultivation and irrigation practices like 'Alternate Wetting Drying (AWD)' and 'Direct Seeded Rice (DSR),' which can save about 25-30% of water requirements in rice cultivation. Greater emphasis on laser levelling is also helping by raising WUE up to 30%. Shifting from cereal-cereal to cereal-legume cropping systems will result in sustainable intensification.

Another example involving climate-resilient seeds is the Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Public Private Partnership Project in Sub-Saharan Africa with AATF, CIMMYT, Gates Foundation, USAID and Bayer. By combining advanced breeding techniques, WEMA has delivered drought-tolerant and insect-resistant maize (corn) seed varieties to smallholder farmers in five African nations.

The Soil Health Card Scheme of the government aims to make sure every farmer has a balanced use of nutrients (N, P and K) on the basis of soil tests. The government is also encouraging the cultivation of nitrogen-efficient crops such as

<footnote n="1">¹According to the government sources.</footnote>
pulses (legumes), which fix nitrogen in the soil and boost crop productivity through Biological Nitrification Fixation (BNF), and investing in precision irrigation technologies through satellite crop-monitoring systems that assess soil moisture, expected rainfall and overall crop conditions to suggest the exact quantity of irrigation required. Use of irrigation sensors that help save water is also being encouraged.

The scaling of innovations helps reduce the inefficient use of scarce natural resources (water and soil), and hopefully makes the food system more efficient, sustainable and climate-resilient.

## 2.3 Marketing Food with Low Intermediation Costs and Low Food Losses

Value chain development and marketing platforms that link farms to agricultural output markets play a critical role in determining prices and incentives for farmers. However, the agri-marketing structure in India continues to be fragmented, with a large number of intermediaries leading to high transaction costs (between 30% and 50% of the retail consumer price). These costs are exacerbated by high commissions of agents, high *mandi* (market) charges and fees in certain states (like Punjab), low investments in supply chains, poor logistics, information asymmetries and a lack of sufficient storage infrastructure. As a result, high intermediation costs for many agri-commodities blunt their global competitiveness. These investments in supply chains are lacking due to restrictive marketing and trading policies, such as the Essential Commodities Act of 1955, that were designed during the era of scarcity. Similarly, indiscriminate export controls that kick in whenever prices of any essential commodity start going up hamper investments in supply lines. The OECD report on Agricultural Policies in India has clearly showed that Indian agricultural marketing policies have favoured consumers over producers by suppressing farmers' prices. The Producer Support Estimate (PSE) for India was negative 11.2% of the value of farm receipts between 2000–01 to 2019–20, while the Consumer Support Estimate (CSE) was one of the highest in the world (28.8%) (OECD 2021). Figures 3 and 4 give PSE and CSE estimates of several countries, respectively, for a period of the latest three years (2017–18, 2018–19 and 2019–20) (OECD 2021). India's PSE is about –4% vis-à-vis 13% for China and 17% for OECD as a group. Contrastingly, CSE for India is highest at 21%. Thus, the typical consumer bias in India's marketing and trade policies still continues. Correcting this bias remains a tall order.

The government's efforts to reform the agri-marketing system, through the recently passed Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers Empowerment and Protection Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and amendment of the Essential Commodities Act, have run into rough weather, as some leaders in the farming industry, particularly from the Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh belt regions, are opposing
<figure><img src="image_170.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 3** Producer Support Estimate, 2017–19 (as a percentage of gross farm receipts). (Source: Author’s compilation from the OECD database, 2021)</figcaption></figure>

these marketing reforms and want assured procurement of all 23 commodities to be bought under the ambit of the MSP program. In the wake of this opposition, these three farm laws have now been withdrawn.

Nevertheless, emergence of digital marketing platforms such as electronic unified agricultural markets (e-NAM), negotiable warehousing and commodity futures, as well as recent government initiatives like the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF), *Atmanirbhar Bharat* (self-reliant India), and Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs), are steps in the right direction, but are not free from implementation gaps, which need to be filled with timely incentives, investments and monitoring.

Other policy interventions to bring about efficiency in agri-marketing, lower transaction costs and reduce food losses include freeing up agricultural markets to greater competition, giving farmers the freedom to sell what they want, where they want, when they want, without any restrictions on sale, stocking, movement, or the export of farm produce, and providing an enabling ecosystem in which private enterprises can invest freely in agriculture value chain development, as it will gradually boost investment in building efficient and sustainable supply chains while ensuring a better share for farmers of consumers’ rupees. For future food and nutritional security, linking farmers to markets will be a critical need.
<figure><img src="image_171.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4** Consumer Support Estimate, 2017–19 (as a percentage of consumption expenditure at the farm gate. (Source: Author's compilation from the OECD database, 2021)</figcaption></figure>

Private companies like ITC are in the forefront of building such efficient value chains. For example, ITC's e-choupal sources over three million tonnes of agri-products from 225 districts in 22 States of India. Its competitive and inclusive agri-value chains, anchored by ITC's world-class FMCG brands, provide consumers with high quality products while generating substantial livelihoods. ITC's fork-to-farm value chains enable the company to manufacture world-class food brands by sourcing differentiated, value-added, identity-preserved, traceable raw materials, and simultaneously empowering farmers with best practices and technology, resulting in enhanced farmer incomes. The multi-stakeholder partnerships that build end-to-end demand-responsive value chains lead to efficiencies and the enlarging of value for farmers.

Marketing reforms also need promotion and finance for the creation of assaying, sorting and grading infrastructures at the mandis. This will reduce variance in the quality of produce from mandi to mandi and encourage retailers and processors to procure through e-NAM (Gulati et al. 2019). Digitalisation of value chains, bringing the physical characteristics to digital platforms, will open up further opportunities for efficient marketing channels with low market risks, benefitting both farmers and consumers. Entrepreneurship for low-cost, rural-based value chains involving youths is now being emphasised.
With solar energy costs coming down drastically, investment in solar-powered cold storage will reduce the costs, as well as losses, of agricultural produce, particularly perishables, and improve storage quality. In the case of onions, losses have been 30-35% in the absence of proper cold storage structures; further, promoting contract farming and other forms of Public Private Partnerships to drive local innovations in the supply chain will also help reduce market risk for farmers and improve their price realisation. Investing in food processing and value addition, as well as linking processing with organised retailing, will go a long way towards building efficient value chains from farm to fork. As the processing industry adds value and absorbs surpluses at the time of harvest, it is believed that, on average, about one-fourth of produce must be processed at this stage of development, as is the case in several south-east Asian economies. But India is way behind on this graph, with less than 10% of agri-produce being processed.

Finally, it should be emphasised that only by developing the forward and backward linkages can the government ease large price fluctuations, ensure a remunerative price for farmers, and provide lower prices for consumers: a win-win situation for all. The current set of Farm Laws had sought to achieve precisely this, but now have been withdrawn due to opposition from some farmers groups (most notably from Punjab, Haryana and western UP) and from opposition parties in the Parliament.

## 2.4 Making Food More Nutritious and Safer for Consumers
While Ensuring Remunerative Prices for Farmers

India's agriculture food system is backed by a unique National Food Security Act (NFSA, 2013) that ensures the availability and affordability of a sufficient supply of food for its population. India's Public Distribution System (PDS), which is the world's largest, covering more than 800 million people, is an important channel through which the government provisions food to the identified poor under various welfare programmes. Social welfare schemes aimed at improving nutrition also focus on ensuring calorie sufficiency, neglecting the quality and diversity of diets and behavioural change towards better nutrition. On behalf of the government, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) procures and stocks food grains from the state agencies to maintain food security and price stability. There is little doubt that ample food availability has been ensured for the country, but its economic access to nutritious diets remains a challenge, as indicated by the high rates of stunting amongst children. The head count ratio of people under extreme poverty measured as a per day per capita income of USD1.9 (at PPP of 2011-12 prices) has declined from 45.9% in 1993 to 38.2% in 2004, and to 13.4% in 2015 (World Development Indicators 2019). A recent Policy Research Working Paper no. 9994 (April 2022) from the World Bank by Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide, gives the head count ratio of extreme poverty at 10.2 percent in 2019. The World Poverty Clock
estimates that India's poverty ratio in 2021, even after accounting for the impact of Covid-19, would be about 6% (World Poverty Clock 2021).

Given the gradual decline in extreme poverty, there is a need to re-visit the NFSA, which covers 67% of population and basically distributes rice and wheat. The FCI operations for the procurement, stocking and distribution of wheat and rice to identified beneficiaries are expensive and riddled with inefficiencies, as they add almost 40% on top of the MSP to farmers. The market prices of rice and wheat often remain way below the economic cost of FCI, especially in rural areas where poverty is concentrated. The overall cost of the food subsidy was INR 4.22 lakh crore (USD 57 billion) in 2020–21, and is provisioned to be INR 2.42 lakh crore (USD 37 billion) in 2021–22. This is huge in relation to the total tax revenue of the Union Government. This calls for a re-examination of the extent of coverage and suggests reducing it from 67% of the population to ~30%, as was suggested by the Economic Survey of 2019–20 (Government of India 2021b), as well as recommending an option of direct cash transfers to identified beneficiaries equivalent to MSP plus 25%. This will lead to demand for more nutritious and diversified food in line with changing consumption patterns.

Notwithstanding the foodgrain surpluses and the world's largest PDS distribution system, India faces a complex challenge around nutritional security. According to the National Family Health Survey (NHFS-4) 2015–16, 35.8% of children below 5 years of age are underweight, 38.4 are stunted and 21% are wasted (International Institute for Population Sciences 2017). Therefore, there is a need to assign the highest priority to addressing all forms of malnutrition.

To augment production of more nutritious food, a wide range of interventions can be undertaken, such as:

- Intervene in food systems in order to help push India's nutritional security status to higher levels. It is often assumed that, as a country's food production goes up, its nutrition levels also go up, as seems to be the case in most of the countries in the world, but this is not true for India. Over the last five decades, total production of foodgrains in India has increased by six-fold: from 51 million tonnes in 1950–51 to about 296.67 million tonnes in 2019–20 (estimated 303 million tonnes in 2020–21). However, India still faces relatively high levels of malnutrition.

- Leverage agricultural policies and programmes to be more “nutrition-sensitive” and reinforce diet diversification towards a nutrient-rich diet. The government has already renamed the National Food Security Mission as the National Food and Nutritional Security Mission from the year 2021–22 onwards, so as to put emphasis on nutrition aspects along with food security. One way is to work with schools in promoting sustainable kitchen gardens to grow vegetables and use them to provide nutritious midday meals to school students. The use of soybean as a food and a good source of protein is another option (TAAS 2014; Paroda and Joshi 2017).

- Bio-fortify basic staples, as a very cost-effective technological innovation for improving the diets of households and the nutritional status of children. The
HarvestPlus programme of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is already working towards this in many countries around the world. In India, too, the HarvestPlus programme is working in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to grow new varieties of nutrient-rich staple food crops, such as iron and zinc bio-fortified pearl millet, zinc bio-fortified rice and wheat, and iron bio-fortified beans (HarvestPlus 2020). The Extension Division of ICAR has also launched two special programmes viz. Nutri-sensitive Agricultural Resources and Innovations (NARI) and Value Addition and Technology Incubation Centres in Agriculture (VATICA) for up-scaling the bio-fortified varieties through its Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs).

- Contribute towards the holistic nourishment of children and a malnutrition-free India by 2030 through initiatives such as the Prime Minister's recent “POSHAN Maah,” which is a step in the right direction. The PM has also announced an effort to scale up production of 17 bio-fortified varieties of eight crops and some nutri-cereals (water-saving crops) that can be further integrated with government support initiatives, like midday meals for elementary school children, to reach millions of vulnerable population groups. The Government of Bihar has also come forward and announced that it will establish a ‘Nutritional Village,’ where farming families will cultivate bio-fortified crops. These policy interventions need to be scaled up across the country and emphasis shall now be on local food systems for enhanced food and nutritional security while ensuring the “One Health” concept.

- Improve the nutritional status of the population, particularly for pre-school children and women of reproductive age. A game-changer policy intervention in this direction could be devoting a part of the food subsidy from wheat and rice to nutritious food crops. Even the private sector, NGOs, and civil society partners can be incentivised towards a mission mode that develops and markets bio-fortified foods.

- Have the Government address other determinants of malnutrition on a war footing, such as the enabling of women's education through liberal scholarships, separate sanitation facilities for girls in schools, and safe drinking water and nutritious food for all at affordable prices. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) is a commendable step towards eliminating open defecation and bringing about behavioural changes in hygiene and sanitation practices.

Thus, this chapter overall argues that fundamental reforms in the agri-food system are the need of the hour, if we are to increase production to feed the growing Indian population, lower transaction costs to achieve marketing efficiency and provide safe, nutritious and affordable food to consumers in an effort to build a healthy India in ways that increase farmers’ income and are more fiscally and environmentally sustainable.

In the final analysis, it is like a symphony orchestra in which our farmers, industry and society are all playing their instruments in perfect synchrony. And success is defined by winning the battle of producing a sufficient amount with efficiency and sustainability, and with an aim towards delivering wellbeing for both the people and the planet by 2050!
**Acknowledgements** We would like to thank Ritika Juneja, Consultant (ICRIER), for her excellent research support in writing this paper.

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**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Part VII

**Strategic Perspectives and Governance**
# The Role of Science, Technology and Innovation in Transforming Food Systems Globally

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Check for
updates

Robin Fears and Claudia Canales

## 1 Introduction: The Transformation of Food Systems

The world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets linked to hunger and food and nutrition security. According to FAO data (FAO 2020), the number of hungry people has increased by 10% in the past 5 years and 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Some countries in Asia and Africa have made significant progress in increasing food and nutrition security alongside reducing poverty in the past decade, but others have not (EIU 2020). The risks continue to be compounded by the impacts of population growth, urbanisation, climate and other environmental changes, market instability and economic inequality. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated problems and imposed disproportionate effects on the economically vulnerable, including marginalised groups in urban areas and smallholder farmers in rural areas (FAO 2020; EIU 2020). However, while there are unprecedented challenges, there are also unprecedented opportunities to capitalise on science, technology and innovation for the purpose of transforming food systems.

In 2018, the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), the global network of more than 140 academies of science, engineering and medicine, published a global report on food and nutrition security and agriculture, drawing on information from four regional reports prepared by academy networks in Africa (NASAC), Asia (AASSA), the Americas (IANAS) and Europe (EASAC) and emphasising the value of taking a transdisciplinary approach. In the present chapter, we present an update on some of the issues from that global report linked to the assessments made

<footnote>R. Fears · C. Canales (✉)
European Academies' Science Advisory Council's (EASAC) Biosciences Programme,
Halle (Saale), Germany
e-mail: canales.claudia@gmail.com</footnote>
in the chapters in this volume prepared by the regional academy networks for the
UNFSS.

The work of the academies has adopted an integrative food systems approach that considers all points along the value chain, encompassing food processing, transport, retail, consumption, and recycling, as well as agricultural production. Moreover, in the transformation of food systems towards economic, social and environmental sustainability, setting agricultural priorities must take account of climate change and pressures on other critical natural resources, particularly water soil and energy, and the continuing need to avoid further loss in ecosystem biodiversity. Interest worldwide in the sustainability of food systems is accelerating (e.g., Global Panel 2020; IFPRI 2020; Food Systems Dashboard 2020; von Braun et al. 2021).

In this chapter, which covers the opportunities and challenges for food systems in tackling malnutrition in all its forms (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity), we frame the contribution that science can make to the local-global connectivity of food systems: (i) to strengthen and safeguard international public goods, i.e., those goods and services that have to be provided at a scale beyond that of individual countries or that can be better achieved collectively; (ii) to understand and tackle environmental and institutional risks in an increasingly uncertain world; and (iii) to help to address the SDGs by resolving complexities within evidence-based policies and programmes and their potential conflicts.

## 2 Regional Heterogeneity

Inevitably, in a summary of the global position, it is difficult to capture the diversity within and between regions relating to the challenges for food systems. The regional chapters are indicative of the territorial dimension in analysing obstacles to food and nutrition security, emphasising specific contexts for marginalised peoples and small-holder farmers, e.g., for the Hindu Kush Himalayan region (AASSA 2021). In Africa, although remarkable progress has been made over the last two decades in reducing extreme hunger, there are increasing pressures on food systems that require radical action (discussed in detail in NASAC 2021). Most African Union member states are not on track to achieve the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Plan goals (African Union 2020). In the comprehensive publication on country-level data in the Americas that accompanied the regional report on food and nutrition security and agriculture (IANAS 2017, regional update IANAS 2021), there was detailed discussion of diversities within the region and of variation in the social determinants of food and nutrition security, e.g., related to gender. Other regional assessments find moderate-severe food insecurity (SDG Indicator 2.1.2) across the FAO Europe-Central Asia region, varying from 6.7% in the EU to 19% in
the Caucasus. Obesity throughout this region is higher than the world average,<fnref n="1" /> a
challenge that has been examined by EASAC (2021).

3 Agriculture-Environment Nexus

IAP defines the desired outcome for food systems as access for all to a healthy and
affordable diet that is environmentally sustainably produced and culturally accept-
able. The IAP report from 2018 cautioned that an emphasis on increasing total factor
productivity (TFP, the efficiency in the use of labour, land, capital and other inputs)
is not warranted if such a focus leads to reductions in environmental protection.
Since then, there has been continuing interest in using research to leverage TFP for
sustainable and resilient farming (e.g., Coomes et al. 2019). In particular, the
paradox of productivity has been highlighted (Benton and Bailey 2019), whereby
agricultural productivity may generate food system inefficiency. That is, productiv-
ity, when leading to the increased availability of cheaper calories, may help to
promote obesity, although nutritional content matters as much as calories. Current
global competition policies incentivise producers who can produce the most food for
the least amount of money, typically with accompanying environmental damage,
including biodiversity loss (Chatham House 2021). The strategic focus of research
and development, as well as production systems, should shift from staple crops, with
the current emphasis on production of a narrow range of calorie-intensive staples, to
a balanced strategy for crops that are of more value in terms of nutritional, social and
environmental benefits, including fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts and legumes (as food
and feed, NASAC 2021).

Reform of food systems requires decision-makers to recognise the interdependence of supply-side and demand-side (including dietary change and waste reduction) actions. There must be further consideration given to strengthening coherence between global agreements, e.g., on responsible investment, and national action (Chatham House 2021). And, the continuing food system sustainability challenge of balancing production objectives for agricultural exports with satisfying domestic food and nutrition requirements is an issue for some countries (e.g., IANAS 2021).

Current intensive agricultural production depends heavily on fertilisers, pesticides, energy, land and water, with negative consequences for environmental sustainability. Changing environmental conditions and competition for key resources such as land and water provoke violence and conflict, exacerbating the vicious circle of hunger and poverty (NASAC 2021). Discussion in the NASAC (2021) Policy Brief exemplifies some of the particular issues for managing water demand, including conservation and the recycling of waste water, and notes the opportunities for

<footnote n="1">¹FAO (2020) “Sustainable food systems and healthy diets in Europe and Central Asia.” ERC/20/2, on www.fao.org/3/nc226en/nc2262n.pdf. This report discusses multiple issues around diversified and sustainable food systems, improving supply chains and reducing food loss and waste.</footnote>
science, technology and innovation in new irrigation schemes. Research and inno-
vation play a crucial role in the transformation to sustainable food systems that
produce more efficiently by environmentally friendly means. The options for the
convergence of technological and societal innovation (including outputs from bio-
technology, AI, digitalisation, and from social and cognitive sciences), exemplified
later in this chapter, help to underpin the objectives for sustainable food systems.

Agro-ecology encompasses various approaches to using nature-based solutions for regenerative agriculture innovation (HLPE 2019) and systems research is still needed to help strengthen the evidence base for agro-ecological (nature-based) approaches. For example, agroforestry in sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to help tackle health concerns associated with a lack of food and nutrition security (non-communicable diseases) and with human migration, but requires additional research to characterise any increased risk from infectious disease alongside the beneficial outcomes (Rosenstock et al. 2019).

Developing diverse and resilient production systems worldwide is important in preparing for the likelihood of cumulative threats from extreme weather events through spillover across multiple food sectors on land and sea (Cottrell et al. 2019). In this context, it is relevant to note the interest in the potential of oceans for sustainable economies in addressing food security, biodiversity and climate change. One of the UK Presidency's core themes for UN FCCC COP26 is "Nature," with objectives for sustainable land use, sustainable and resilient agriculture, and increasing ambition and awareness of the ocean's potential. This potential is also of great importance for the UN FSS Action Track on nature-positive production. By contrast with difficulties in expanding land-based agriculture, the potential for the sustainable production of fish and other seafood is increasingly recognised (Lubchenco et al. 2020; Costello et al. 2020) and brings new possibilities for local livelihoods. Fish supplies provide 19% of the animal protein in African diets (Chan et al. 2019; NASAC 2021). However, currently, one-third of the world's marine fish stocks are overfished (FAO 2020). Realising the potential of the oceans requires technological innovation and policy reform for fishery management and governance, to restore wild fish stocks, eliminate illegal and unregulated fishing, and ensure sustainable mariculture so as to minimise environmental impacts. Oceans can contribute to climate change mitigation as well as to improved food systems, but it is important to be aware of inadvertent consequences of policy action, e.g., adoption of industrial-scale aquaculture can be associated with rapid growth in GHGs (in China, Yuan et al. 2019). Genetic improvement of fish species may help to reduce the environmental footprint of aquaculture (for example, in Africa, where aquaculture has been expanding at a faster rate than in some other places, NASAC 2021). This exemplifies a general point about seeking co-ordinated policy across sectors to avoid unintended effects and negative trade-offs. Another example is provided by poorly-designed land use policies to increase bioenergy production, which drive increases in land rent with negative implications for food and nutrition security (Fujimori et al. 2019).
## 4 Delivering Healthy Diets, Sustainably Produced, Under Climate Change

An accumulating evidence base demonstrates that climate change exacerbates food insecurity in all regions by reducing crop yield and nutritional content and by posing additional food safety risks from toxins and microbial contamination (e.g., IPCC 2019; Park et al. 2019; Ray et al. 2019; Watts et al. 2021). The effects are most pronounced in those groups who are already vulnerable, e.g., children, because of reduced nutrient intake (Park et al. 2019) or a decline in dietary diversity (Niles et al. 2021). A systematic review of the literature identified climate change and violent conflict as the most consistent predictors of child malnutrition (Brown et al. 2020). By increasing the volatility of risks in the global food system, climate change may also reduce the incentive to invest (IAP 2018), and rising heat- and humidity-induced declines in labour productivity reduce the income of subsistence farmers (Andrews et al. 2018).

Although better international integration of food trade can be a key component of climate change adaptation at the global scale, it requires sensitive implementation to benefit all regions (Janssens et al. 2020): in hunger-affected export-oriented regions, partial trade integration may exacerbate food and nutrition insecurity by increasing exports at the expense of domestic food availability. When assessing trade implications, it is also important to appreciate that climate change presents a risk to global port operations, with the greatest risk being projected for ports located in the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula and the African Mediterranean (Izaguirre et al. 2021).

There are twin, overarching challenges for food systems: how can they adapt to climate change and, at the same time, reduce their own contribution to it, including in regard to GHG emissions? These intertwined challenges are discussed in all of the regional assessments. Multiple scientific opportunities have been identified to adapt by developing climate-resilient agriculture, e.g., from the application of biosciences to breed improved crop varieties resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, as well as for the social sciences to understand and influence the behaviour of farmers, manufacturers and consumers in responding to climate change (see, for example, EASAC 2021). Combining evidence-based measures will also be essential to mitigate GHG emissions from the sector (currently contributing approximately 30% of global GHGs, Watts et al. 2021), including improving agronomic practices, reducing waste, and shifting to diets with a lower carbon footprint. For example, a background paper prepared in 2020 for the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of UN FCCC COP<fnref n="2" /> explored agronomic case studies (in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe) for managing nitrogen pollution (including the powerful GHG nitrous oxide) and improving manure management so as to decrease GHGs and benefit the environment. Capitalising on such research requires better

<footnote n="2">²SBSTA 52nd Session 2020. "Improved nutrient use and manure management towards sustainable and resilient agricultural systems". FCCC/SB/2020/1.</footnote>
connections between science and the broader community, along with relevant policy
processes. There is particular need to dismantle obstacles to the transferability of
practices and the scaling up of local research results to guide decision-making at the
national and regional levels.

One major mitigation opportunity discussed by IAP (2018) and in all of the
regional assessments relates to the potential to adjust dietary consumption patterns
so as to reduce GHGs and, at the same time, gain significant potential health benefits
(see Neufeld et al. 2021 for discussion of the definition of a healthy diet). For
example, there is evidence that reducing red meat consumption, where it is exces-
sive, can improve population health (Willett et al. 2019; systematic review of the
literature in Jarmul et al. 2020). Red meat supplies only 1% of calories worldwide,
while accounting for 25% of all land use emissions (Hong et al. 2021), though meat
is an important source of protein, minerals and vitamins. The policies for reaching
such consumption adjustments require more research to actually identify solutions.
The proportion of excess deaths attributable to excess red meat consumption is
highest in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Americas and the Western Pacific
(Watts et al. 2021). However, some populations consume sustainable diets that are
meat-based, e.g., the Inuit Indigenous People in the Canadian Arctic: proposals for
dietary change must be carefully designed, evidence-based and culturally sensitive
in being adapted to circumstances and protecting nutrient supplies for the most
vulnerable groups. It should also be acknowledged that the efficiency of livestock
production varies according to farming system, such that conclusions, e.g., about the
sustainability of pastoral cattle production, may be different from those for feed-lot
cattle production (Adeosogen et al. 2019; AASSA 2021), and that livestock may be
the only agricultural activity possible in dryland regions that do not support the
cultivation of crops.

Although Africa accounts for the smallest regional share of total anthropogenic GHG emissions, about half of this is linked to agriculture, and the continent is experiencing the fastest increase of all regions (Tongwane and Moeletsi 2018; Latin America and South East Asia are also demonstrating rapid growth, Hong et al. 2021). As part of the whole systems approach, formulation of mitigation solutions must decouple increases in livestock productivity (and cereal productivity, Loon et al. 2019) from increases in GHGs. Progress is being made (e.g., in China, Cui et al. 2018; AASSA 2021), and decoupling can be informed by better use of the research evidence available, e.g., for improving herd management and animal health, breeding new varieties (with better feed conversion and energy utilisation efficiencies), improving forage provision (e.g., NASAC 2021) and strengthening targeted social protection mechanisms, alongside more generic recommendations for dietary change (EASAC 2021).

There are unprecedented scientific opportunities coming within range, but there
are also multiple obstacles to mainstreaming climate change solutions into food
system development planning. Evaluation of obstacles in India (Singh et al. 2017)
highlights the limited access to finance, difficulties in accessing research and edu-
cation, and delays in accessing weather information. Systematic review of the
literature on smallholder production systems in South Asia (Aryal et al. 2020)
notes weaknesses in the institutional infrastructure for implementing and disseminating
available solutions: the application of science requires institutional change. At the global scale, there is a need for enhanced access to climate information and services around climate-resilient food security actions (WMO 2019), e.g., to aid decisions on the most suitable crops and planting times.

# 5 Responding to Covid-19

Climate change and Covid-19 are converging crises for health in many respects (Anon 2021), including food and nutrition security. Observations early in the pandemic<fnref n="3" /> indicated that the production of staple food crops during critical periods (planting and harvesting) was vulnerable to interruptions in labour supply; food processing, transport and retail were also affected early on, particularly the relatively perishable, nutritionally-important fresh fruit and vegetables (Ali et al. 2020). Subsequent comprehensive assessment of consequences for global food security (Swinner and McDermott 2020) has evaluated how adverse effects on local practice and routines are transmitted to longer-term impacts on poverty and food systems worldwide in increasingly interconnected trade and markets. In some cases, supply disruption has been aggravated by national decisions to restrict the export of food.<fnref n="4" /> The combined effects of Covid-19 in regard to economic recession and food system disruption are particularly detrimental to the poor (Ali et al. 2020; Swinner and McDermott 2020, which includes case studies in Ethiopia, China, Egypt and Myanmar; NASAC 2021). However, in some regions, food systems proved relatively resilient (IANAS 2021), and there are also examples of good practice in new safety net programmes, including school feeding programmes that should be more widely shared and implemented. Tackling the consequences for child malnutrition has been identified as a particular priority for action (Fore et al. 2020), as has attention to gender bias, whereby women are suffering more adverse effects as a consequence of Covid-19-changed household and community dynamics (Swinner and McDermott 2020).

As emphasised by EASAC (2021), the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of over-reliance on just-in-time and lean delivery systems, globalised food production and distribution based on complex value chains. Therefore, opportunities for increasing the localisation of production systems should be re-examined. However, there is often a mismatch in the timescale needed to adapt to Covid-19 between the imperative for early action to protect vulnerable groups and the relatively slow policy responses (Savary et al. 2020). Capitalising on the scientific opportunities may help to minimise this mismatch, e.g., improving food safety and reducing post-harvest losses (IAP 2018), implementing evidence-based social protection measures and

<footnote n="3">³CGIAR's response to COVID-19. www.cgiar.org/news-events/all-news/our-response-to-covid-19</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴International Monetary Fund “Policy responses to COVID-19”. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid-19/Policy-Responses-to-COVID-19</footnote>
using Information and Communication Technologies for e-commerce, food supply resilience, early warning systems, and health delivery. Post-Covid-19 initiatives on novel foods, and urban and peri-urban farming systems, can also strengthen food supply chains and create new livelihoods for expanding urban populations, although it is also important to understand and manage inadvertent consequences for rural employment and the environment (Ali et al. 2020).

# 6 Using Science, Technology and Innovation to Promote and Evaluate Action

Continuing with business as usual will not meet the objectives for transformative change. To reaffirm a core message from IAP (2018): there is urgent need to use currently available evidence to strengthen policies and programmes, and to invest in initiatives to gain new knowledge. Examples of what is possible are discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Fanzo et al. 2020; Lillford and Hermansson 2020).<fnref n="5" /> It is not the purpose here to provide a detailed assessment of transdisciplinary research priorities, but in Table 1, we map some onto the UN FSS Action Tracks to emphasise new opportunities that are coming within range and the need for science to achieve its potential. Examples are illustrative, not comprehensive; more detail on these and other research priorities are provided in IAP (2018), the regional chapters and in Sects. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this chapter. There are also, of course, many interactions between research streams and objectives that cannot be captured in Table 1.

Several general recommendations can be made:

* There is a need to increase the commitment to invest in fundamental science, and then connect that to applications and align it all with development priorities. There is also an important priority to develop improved methodologies for understanding the levers of change, including the attributes of “game-changers.” That is, how to attribute outcomes and impact to investments chosen and scientific or other actions undertaken.

* There are new opportunities to improve collaboration and coordination worldwide, as well as build partnerships among the public and private sectors, NGOs and other stakeholders to co-design and conduct research. Transdisciplinary approaches should be encouraged. There is increasing entrepreneurial activity worldwide, e.g., in the Latin America region, a wide range of start-up company activities includes novel foods, novel production systems, and novel approaches to the optimisation of water and other natural resources (IANAS 2021). There are also considerable opportunities in Africa for action on agriculture to stimulate

<footnote n="5">⁵See also repositories of recent literature, e.g., Sustainable solutions to end hunger (https://www.nature.com/collections/dhiggjeagd); Sustainable nutrition (https://www.nature.com/collections/fibbgbiebc); and Socio-technical innovation bundles for agri-food transformation (https://www.nature.com/documents/Bundles_agrifood_transformation.pdf).</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 1** The power of fundamental science</caption><thead><tr><td>UN FSS Action Track</td><td>Examples of research opportunities</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1. Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all</td><td>Clarifying the scientific basis for balancing of food systems for a greater emphasis on nutrition, not just calories; incentives to promote sustainable practices and products, and disincentives for foods with high environmental footprints or adverse health effects. Integration of local, regional and global scales for sustainability, including renewed emphasis on the value of indigenous crops. Broad research agenda for the agriculture-environment nexus, including livestock bio-metrics. Plus, bio/chemical sciences to identify the health value of novel foods, the holistic properties of foods (inter-actions within complex food matrices and mixtures), and components not ordinarily considered as nutrients (such as flavonoids, probiotics, anthocyanins) (Kongerslev et al. 2017 for dairy products; Thorrez and Vandenburgh 2019 for cultured meat; Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2019 for ethical issues).</td></tr><tr><td>2. Shift to sustainable consumption patterns</td><td>Social sciences to understand demand-side issues, the role of public procurement, value-driven consumption patterns (Smith et al. 2016; Cuevas et al. 2017; Eker et al. 2019; Laar et al. 2020). Using advances in food science and technology in food processing to reduce post-harvest losses (Lillford and Hermansson 2020).</td></tr><tr><td>3. Boost nature-positive production</td><td>Understanding the value and vulnerabilities of mixed farming systems; reduction in the use of external inputs (including antimicrobials); mapping and using soil microbiomics (Singh et al. 2020); conserving and using genetic diversity in breeding (FAO 2019; Pironen et al. 2019). Realising the potential of the oceans (Lubchenko et al. 2020).</td></tr><tr><td>4. Advance equitable livelihoods</td><td>Big data capture, analysis and communication, e.g., for precision agriculture (Hodson de Jaramillo et al. 2019; Basso and Antle 2020), supporting smallholders and new livelihoods</td></tr><tr><td>5. Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress</td><td>Earth Observation Sciences to monitor agronomic status and guide interventions at a large scale (Jain et al. 2019), linked to other technologies for crop sensors, mobile devices and remote monitoring. Development of baselines, attribution methodologies, reconciling differences in temporal and spatial scales in measurement, increasing understanding of synergies and trade-offs. Plus, the broad research agenda for tackling climate change and Covid-19 in the provision of equitable services, including health care and social protection.</td></tr></tbody></table>

economic growth reducing poverty while also increasing food and nutrition security (Baumuller et al. 2021; NASAC 2021).

* Training and mentoring the next generation of researchers worldwide is essential: academies of science have a key role in encouraging younger scientists.
* Obstacles, especially in low- and middle-income countries, in the use and production of data and in the scaling up of applications must be addressed. For example, although big data/mobile-based communications bring significant benefits (e.g., IANAS 2021; NASAC 2021) and there have been advances in using mobile technology to deliver climate services for agriculture in Africa (Dayamba et al. 2018), more should be done to increase access for small-scale farmers (Mehrabi et al. 2021). A digital inclusion agenda is needed for governments and the private sector to increase access to data-driven agriculture.

* In addition to generating excellent science, it is vital to reduce the delay in translating research outputs into innovation, public policy and practice (IAP 2018). Time lags may arise from negative attitudes associated with perceived risks, from excessive regulatory requirements in some countries or from an absence of regulation in others. This leads to fragmentation in the capture of benefits. For example, there is current heterogeneity in considering whether new plant-breeding techniques – such as those based on genome editing – should be included within older legislation governing genetically modified organisms. Scientific advances are occurring worldwide, e.g., collaborative work in Colombia, Germany, France, the Philippines and the USA to develop rice that is resistant to bacterial blight (Oliva et al. 2019; IANAS 2021). The controversy created by a situation in which regulatory frameworks are disconnected from robust science is discussed by EASAC (2021). Figure 1 demonstrates the resulting incoherence that acts to deter science, innovation and competitiveness, creates non-tariff barriers to trade and undermines collective action to enhance food and nutrition security. This may have particular adverse consequences for those already suffering malnutrition; for example, the acceptance of gene-based technologies has

<figure><img src="image_174.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1** Variation in the regulation of genome editing for plant breeding</figcaption></figure>