Context:

• October 16 is celebrated as the World Food Day around the world.
• It is the foundation day of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations which was set up in 1945. 
• FAO was set up to deal with the hunger issues post World War II with a global vision to ensure that enough food is produced to feed the increasing population.

About World Food Prize

• The World Food Prize is an annual international honour that recognizes and rewards individuals who make exceptional achievements in addressing food security.
• It is presented to individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world
• The $250,000 award recognizes contributions in any field involved in the world food supply including, but not limited to: plant, animal and soil science; food science and technology; nutrition; rural development; marketing; food processing and packaging; water and the environment; natural resource conservation; physical infrastructure; transportation, storage and distribution; special or extraordinary feeding programs; social organisation and poverty elimination; economics and finance; policy analysis; and public advocacy.
• The World Food Prize calls forth the global imperative to provide safe, affordable, nutritious, sustainable nutritious and equitable food for all.
• The World Food Prize is given every year on October 16 in a special ceremony in Des Moines, Iowa.
• Cynthia Rosenzweig has won this year’s award for her pioneering work in modelling the impact of climate change on food production. 

Issues surrounding food production

Agriculture contributes to GHG

• While agriculture gets severely impacted by climate change, it also leads to almost 28 per cent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thus contributing to global warming.

Malnutrition

• Although the world has enough food to feed almost 8 billion people on this planet now, access to food at affordable prices, however, remains a challenge for a substantial segment of humanity which leads to malnutrition.

Ideologies vs scientific knowledge

• Countries that are guided by scientific knowledge and the spirit of innovation, instead of ideologies and dogmas, have produced ample food, even in deserts. Eg: Israel.
• Many countries driven by ideologies have suffered terrible outcomes.Examples include
  • China – During 1958-61, more than 30 million people died of starvation when Mao wanted to transform China from an agrarian society to a commune-based system of communist ideology.
  • India– India suffered due to two successive droughts in the mid-1960s Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership resorted to a heavy industry-led development strategy as a means to wipe out poverty. Although not many starvation deaths, India was forced to rely on PL 480 food aid from the USA that could lead to political compromises.

Way forward

• Instead of investing only in climate adaptation strategies we should also re-work our policies that can mitigate GHG emissions for agriculture.
• Work on policies that incentivise people to change their behaviour towards agriculture or in any other field.
• It’s high time for India to double or even triple its expenditure on agri-research and development and education. (From current 0.6 percent to at least 1 percent and preferably 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP)

Conclusion

• For India to be self-reliant (atma nirbhar) in food even in the face of adverse climate change these steps have to be taken.