World Food Day Special: From Farm to Market, to Farm to Value : Dr. M. L. Jat, Secretary, DARE & Director General, ICAR.

New Delhi, Delhi, 15th of October, 2026 : India has moved from food scarcity to record harvests. The next leap is from volume to value and from food security to nutrition security, powered by climate-smart science, post-harvest value chains and the blend of modern innovation with traditional knowledge, with farmers’ net income as the true yardstick of success.

Food is not merely the foundation of life; it is deeply linked to the social stability, economic strength, and human dignity of any nation. Therefore, World Food Day is not just an occasion to reiterate our commitment to providing sufficient food, but also a time to reflect on how secure, nutritious, sustainable, and farmer-centric our food systems truly are. The theme for 2026 “Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow”, points toward this shifting priority. This year’s FAO call to pair cutting-edge innovation with traditional knowledge and inclusive approaches resonates closely with India’s own agricultural journey.

India’s agricultural journey is a remarkable story of transformation. After independence, the country struggled with food grain shortages, low productivity, and heavy reliance on imports. Coordinated efforts in high-yielding seeds, irrigation, agricultural research, fertilizers, institutional credit, and price support gave birth to the Green Revolution. The result was not merely an increase in wheat and paddy production; India achieved food self-sufficiency and laid a strong foundation for its growth. From a nation once dependent on food aid, India is today the world’s largest producer of milk and pulses and its largest rice exporter.

Today, looking at agriculture solely through the lens of grain production is no longer enough. Agriculture is becoming a catalyst for nutrition, employment, entrepreneurship, value creation, and rural prosperity.

The Changing Face of Agricultural Growth

India’s agricultural transformation can be broadly viewed in three phases. Between 1967 and 1995, the primary focus was on food self-sufficiency and grain production. From 1996 to 2014, agricultural diversification gained momentum alongside changing food demand and rising incomes. Post-2015, resource efficiency, climate resilience, and farmers’ income have emerged as critical goals alongside diversification.

Evidence of this shift is clearly reflected in agricultural growth data, wherein a structural upward trend in agricultural momentum is revealed. Average annual growth hovered at 2.71% during the 1967–1995 period and 2.98% between 1996 and 2014, before marking a significant acceleration to approximately 4.51% in the post-2015 era. Currently too, India’s agricultural trajectory continues to reach new heights. Building on the record 357.73 million tonnes (MT) harvested in 2024–25, national food grain production for 2025–26 is estimated to hit an unprecedented milestone of 376.56 MT. This is a robust 5.3% year-on-year growth propelled by record yields in rice, wheat, and maize.

While these achievements are significant, the question today is not merely how much more we can produce. The real question is how much better we can produce with fewer resources, and how much we can increase farmers’ incomes through that production.

Why Science Must Lead Agriculture’s Climate Paradigm Shift

Escalating climate change, severe groundwater depletion, soil degradation, and planetary resource boundaries necessitate a fundamental shift in agricultural development. The next agricultural revolution cannot rely on resource intensity; its core mandate must be lower input requirements, reduced climate risk, higher resource-use efficiency, and enhanced farmer livelihoods.

Here, national agricultural research systems play a decisive role. The priority must shift toward developing resilient crop varieties capable of enduring compound climate stresses such as droughts, heatwaves, flooding, and emerging biosecurity threats, while optimizing water productivity and delivering higher nutritional density.

Frontier technologies including genomics, gene editing, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and precision digital agriculture, are accelerating this structural paradigm shift. In 2025–26 alone, of the 386 new crop varieties released by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), 94% were climate-resilient and 29% biofortified. Concurrently, ICAR expanded its intellectual property portfolio with 805 IP applications and strengthened technology transfer mechanisms across 36 national research institutes.

This trajectory signals a profound realignment. Agricultural research is no longer defined solely by volumetric yield, but by its capacity to concurrently safeguard climate resilience and nutritional security. The new equation is simple: more crop per drop, more nutrition per hectare, and more income per farmer.

From Farm to Market, to Farm to Value

A farmer’s prosperity cannot be achieved through production alone. Farmers will receive a fair price for their produce only when they become more effective participants across the entire value chain. Hence, we must evolve our thinking from “farm to market” to “farm to value”.

A major portion of agricultural value is created outside the farm gate. This includes grading, processing, packaging, branding, storage, cold chain, transport, and export which are all critical links that add value to farm produce. Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), cooperatives, agricultural infrastructure, and digital markets can accelerate this shift. With nearly 86% of India’s land holdings small and marginal, collective action through FPOs is the most practical route for these farmers to capture value, while digital public infrastructure such as Agri Stack and e-NAM can connect them directly to buyers, credit and real-time market information.

The future of agriculture will be determined not just by what is harvested in the field, but by the value generated from that harvest.

Realigning India’s Agricultural Paradigm from Food Security to Nutrition Security

Having achieved food grain self-sufficiency through the Green Revolution, India’s next strategic imperative is transitioning from basic food security to comprehensive nutrition security. Evolving consumer preferences are driving higher demand for pulses, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and fish. This requires agricultural policy and ICAR research to realign with these shifting requirements. Central to this transition is addressing key supply and structural challenges. While domestic pulse production has reached 26–27 MT through short-duration varieties, India still imports 55–60% of its edible oil, a gap targeted by the National Mission on Edible Oils.

Data estimates from ICAR-Central Institute of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET) indicate post-harvest losses of 4.5–15% for fruits and vegetables and 3–6% for pulses and grains. Curbing post-harvest losses through farm-gate micro-warehousing and cold chains is essential to preserve vital nutrients. Furthermore, with agriculture consuming over 80% of fresh water, expanding micro-irrigation under PMKSY-PDMC (which boosts water-use efficiency by 30–50% and yields by 20–30%) and diversifying water-scarce zones into pulses, oilseeds, and millets will optimize nutritional output per water unit.

To combat hidden hunger, ICAR has deployed over 200 biofortified crop varieties, such as zinc-rich wheat and iron-enriched pearl millet, alongside expanding India’s leading livestock and fisheries sectors, where annual milk output exceeds 230 MT, to build a balanced, nutrient-dense national dietary basket.

Convergence of Science and Indian Knowledge Systems

To operationalize India’s agricultural transition, policy frameworks must drive an evidence-based convergence of modern scientific innovation and Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), systematically evaluating and documenting traditional farming and water management traditions alongside advanced precision technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT sensors, and remote sensing. This will help to build climate-resilient, biodiverse agro-ecosystems. This is precisely the blend of innovation and tradition that this year’s World Food Day theme calls for.

Expanding beyond the Green Revolution’s primary focus on food self-sufficiency, national priorities must now pivot toward comprehensive nutritional and environmental security, ensuring every citizen has access to safe, nutrient-dense food while safeguarding long-term soil health and water productivity.

Realizing this vision requires an integrated, whole-of-society implementation strategy that aligns scientific research, farmer participation, market infrastructure, policy interventions, and civic responsibility to move from volume-driven production to value-driven prosperity, ultimately establishing net farm-gate income growth, resource conservation, and sustained dietary quality as the primary benchmarks of agricultural success.

Innovation, however, matters only when it reaches the last mile. Every technology must travel from lab to land, with women farmers, rural youth and agri-startups as active partners in this transformation.

Today’s innovation will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s nutrition. Today’s resource conservation will secure the food supply of future generations. And the rising prosperity of our farmers will be the greatest measure of success in this entire journey. This is the true essence of World Food Day—from food to nutrition, from production to value, and from agricultural development to sustainable farmer prosperity.

(The author is Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) & Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR))