Way Forward

At a country level, when issues of feeding its population are concerned, one has to have a sufficiently long-term vision. The Way Forward chapter, therefore, focuses on various challenges that India, China and Israel are likely to face say towards 2030 or even beyond, and how emerging innovations in agri-food space can help these countries to meet these challenges. Some of these challenges are known with reasonable degree of certainty, while many others, especially of short-term nature may be uncertain and random, but the countries need to prepare themselves for meeting all these challenges. This chapter particularly focuses on five major challenges that these countries will face in varying degrees as they move towards 2030 and beyond, including the challenge of feeding large and growing population with rising per capita incomes and limited resources of cultivable land and water in relation to their populations; the challenge of tackling hidden hunger (malnutrition), which is specifically critical for India; the challenge of climate change and its likely impact on agriculture; and the challenge of increasing urbanisation and the need to move larger quantities of food from hinterlands to urban areas, while ensuring food safety, its traceability and its freshness. The chapter evaluates how these challenges can be met with forward-looking innovations in the agri-food space, balanced policy mix and right institutions related to land, water, agri-research and extension and farm machinery use in the three countries to ensure food security and food safety of their people.