Why Food, Agriculture and Climate must be understood as one system.

In India and across the Global South, the future of food will depend not only on what we grow and eat, but on how we build resilience, reduce waste, and restore the systems that sustain both people and the planet

Dr. Chindu Chandran, Manager – Climate Change and Sustainability, MicroSave Consulting India

Food is never just food. It is not only memory, migration, culture, seasonality, labour and land, but also, inescapably, climate. A bowl of rice in Kerala shaped by monsoon rhythms, a coastal nasi goreng plate in Southeast Asia influenced by marine ecosystems, a maize-based tortilla meal rooted in rainfed farming systems in Latin America, or a cassava dish in East Africa adapted to fragile soils and climate stress may appear as expressions of culinary identity, but each carries a far deeper story. Behind every meal lies rainfall patterns, soil health, water stress, and the resilience or vulnerability of the farmers who made it possible.

For too long, gastronomy, agriculture, climate, and sustainability have been treated as parallel conversations, discussed in silos and often by different communities, institutions, experts, and governance systems. In reality, they are not separate domains at all. They all belong to one deeply interconnected system, and nowhere is that more visible than in India and across the Global South, where food remains inseparable from livelihoods, culture, community, and ecology. 

“Every plate is a climate story. And every climate story begins in the field.”

Figure 1: Key statistics on food systems, climate, and hunger during recent years

A system that drives and suffers the crisis

The paradox at the heart of our food system is difficult to ignore. Agrifood systems are among the sectors most exposed to climate shocks such as heat stress, erratic monsoons, floods, and droughts, which contribute to soil degradation. Yet these same systems are substantial drivers of the crisis threatening them. FAO’s latest FAOSTAT release shows that global agrifood systems emitted 16.5 Gt CO₂eq in 2023, accounting for about 32% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. ^[1] Of that, 8.1 Gt came from farm-gate activities, that is, emissions generated on farms themselves through livestock rearing, rice cultivation, manure management, fertilizer use and on-farm energy.[1] This is critical because it shows that a large share of emissions originates at the production stage itself, where farmers operate with the least resources and the highest climate exposure. Livestock alone accounted for just over half of farm-gate emissions, making it the single largest component within agrifood system emissions.^[1] This matters not to reduce food systems to a debate about any single commodity, but to highlight where mitigation and adaptation efforts must converge at the farm level, where emissions, livelihoods, and climate risk intersect most directly. 

In India, agriculture contributed 17.7% of Gross Value Added (GVA) in FY2023-24^[5], underlining that food is not peripheral to the national economy; it is foundational. Across the Global South, smallholder farmers sit at the centre of this equation. Farms under two hectares produce roughly one-third of the world’s food, yet they often operate with the thinnest margins, weakest safety nets and least protection against climate shocks.^[8] They feed populations while carrying disproportionate climate risk. 

Climate stress is already on the plate

For much of the Global North, climate change remains a projection. In the Global South, it is already a reality - visible in the kitchen and in the market. Unseasonal rains flatten crops. Heatwaves reduce labour productivity. Floods disrupt supply chains. For rainfed farmers, climate variability becomes income volatility and for low-income consumers, that volatility translates into food inflation, dietary compromise, and nutritional stress.

The 2025 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World estimates that 673 million people,8.2% of the global population, faced hunger in 2024^[3], still above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. A further 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity — 335 million more than in 2019.^[3] Meanwhile, the UNEP Food Waste Index 2024 records that the world wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food in 2022 — equivalent to 19% of all food available to consumers.^[4] Food loss and waste in 2022 accounted for 8-10% of global GHG emissions, nearly five times the aviation sector's total output.^[4] These are not parallel failures. Hunger, emissions, and waste coexist inside the same broken system.

Figure 2: The food–climate–gastronomy system

Gastronomy as a lever, not merely a matter of aesthetics

This is where gastronomy becomes far more powerful than aesthetics. Food is not only consumed; it is curated, celebrated, marketed, and desired. Menus influence demand. Demand shapes markets. Markets influence what farmers grow. What chefs choose to celebrate, what restaurants decide to source, and what food media amplifies all shape public aspiration and, ultimately, the direction of the food economy. Seen this way, gastronomy is not a decorative layer placed on top of the food system. It is an active force within it.

In today’s algorithm-driven food culture, social media shapes what we see and what we value on our plates. Visually appealing, protein-centric, and globally standardized meals are often amplified, gradually narrowing what is considered desirable. This shift risks sidelining diverse, locally adapted foods in favour of a more homogenized diet. But resilient diets are not built on single nutrients. They rely on diversity like grains, pulses, tubers, greens, and traditional cuisines that nourish both people and the planet. When this diversity is lost, so is resilience. History offers cautionary lessons: moments like the Bengal famine reveal how fragile food systems can become when production, access, and consumption fall out of balance. Today, while the context has changed, the risk of disconnecting food from its ecological roots persists, now accelerated by digital influence.

India offers a compelling blueprint. Long before sustainability became a formal framework, Indian food cultures had already embedded many of its principles in everyday practice: seasonal eating, fermentation, plant-forward diets, zero-waste kitchen traditions, and the intelligent use of local grains, pulses, and greens. These practices were never presented as climate strategies; they were simply part of living within ecological limits.

The global revival of millets, once dismissed as “coarse grain” and now increasingly recognized as nutritionally rich and climate-resilient, reflects more than a food trend. It marks a civilizational shift. Many foods treated as ordinary, outdated, or marginal may, in fact, hold the keys to a more resilient future. The challenge for gastronomy is to ensure these foods are not romanticized only occasionally but restored to everyday desirability and dignity.

In practice: How MSC is turning data into action at the food–climate nexus

Bridging the gap between food systems thinking and field-level change requires institutions that can work across policy, finance, markets and farmer realities. With over 27 years of experience, MicroSave Consulting (MSC) works at the intersection of climate, agriculture, and inclusive finance across the Global South. With a team of 450+ experts and operations spanning ~70 developing countries, MSC supports governments, financial institutions, and enterprises in translating climate ambition into on-the-ground impact.

MSC-supported interventions have reached over 1.8 billion people globally, reflecting its scale and depth of engagement in building resilient and inclusive systems. MSC serves as co-chair of the CIFAR Alliance's Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRAg) Co-Lab. This global platform accelerates digital and financial innovations to strengthen smallholder farmers' climate resilience, particularly women's.

Key MSC initiatives at the food–climate nexus - by region:

South Asia

• Smallholder Climate Coping Study (Bangladesh): CGAP-sponsored consumer research examining how low-income farming households in Bangladesh and Nigeria use financial services to prepare for and recover from climate shocks, including droughts and cyclones. The study is informing CGAP's broader climate-finance strategy for resilient smallholder communities.

• India's Climate Stack — CRAS (2026): MSC's flagship thought leadership initiative proposing federated digital public infrastructure that links climate, emissions, and agricultural data — making agriculture the starting point for India's national climate intelligence architecture.

• Greening Agricultural Supply Chains (South Asia): Advisory on value chain sustainability, climate-resilient finance products, and market systems development across South Asia and Africa, integrating climate risk into agricultural lending and insurance for smallholder farmers.

East & West Africa

• CRAg Virtual Club — East Africa: A global platform connecting AgriTech startups, investors, NGOs and government programmes on smallholder climate adaptation, with a dedicated East African chapter addressing climate information services and farmer resilience. Linked to UN COP processes.

• Smallholder Climate Coping Study (Nigeria): Part of the CGAP-sponsored multi-country research on climate coping strategies, the Nigeria strand focuses on how farming households experiencing droughts and extreme weather events leverage financial tools — and what gaps remain in the formal financial system.

• Digital Microinsurance Advisory (Ethiopia): Technical advisory to develop NDVI-based digital microinsurance for an Ethiopian FinTech company, enabling satellite-derived crop index data to trigger climate-risk payouts for smallholder farmers facing drought.

Southeast Asia

• Food Systems & Health Nutrition Programme (Indonesia & Southeast Asia): MSC is driving health, nutrition, and food systems advisory work with governments, donors, and private sector partners across Indonesia and broader Southeast Asia, translating complex food system challenges into scalable, policy-relevant solutions in one of the world's most biodiverse agricultural regions.

• Climate & Disaster Risk Insurance — Landscape Study (Asia): A regional landscape study of climate and disaster risk insurance across Asia, mapping existing products, gaps, and opportunities for inclusive, tech-enabled insurance solutions that protect smallholder farmers against climate-induced agricultural losses.

Pacific

• Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme — PFIP Phase II (Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Samoa & Vanuatu): MSC conducted a scoping mission for UNDP and UNCDF across Pacific Island Countries and designed the 2014–2018 Phase II of the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme. The programme covered five Pacific nations and secured an initial round of funding exceeding USD 21 million, with interventions ultimately benefiting more than 500,000 Pacific islanders — many of whom are smallholder farmers and coastal communities acutely exposed to climate risks.

• Microfinance Sector Development — Papua New Guinea: MSC led a four-year intervention with the Central Bank of Papua New Guinea to build the country's microfinance sector, including setting up a Risk Share Facility to manage risks associated with MSE lending. The programme reduced individual loan turnaround times from two months to eight days and supported community groups — with women comprising a significant proportion of trainees — reinforcing economic resilience in climate-exposed communities.

Global / Cross-regional

• CRAg Co-Lab — CIFAR Alliance (Global): MSC serves as co-chair of the Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRAg) Co-Lab within the CIFAR Alliance — a global platform accelerating digital and financial innovations for smallholder climate resilience. The Co-Lab connects players across South Asia, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and beyond shared frameworks for climate adaptation finance.

MSC's work reflects a core conviction: that climate adaptation in food systems requires not just agronomic advice but also inclusive finance, digital tools, locally led design, and sustained market linkages.

Figure 3: The choice before us. Gastronomy and policy are the bridge that can shift food systems from the vicious to the virtuous cycle.

The future must be regenerative, not merely efficient

The next chapter of food systems cannot be built on extraction, not from soil, groundwater, or biodiversity, or from the labor of those who grow our food. It must instead be built on regeneration: on restoring ecological health while strengthening social and economic resilience. Efficiency alone is not enough if it merely enables us to extract more from already stressed systems.

Building such a transition requires more than policy and technology; it requires a shift in how we understand food itself. Embedding food and gastronomy education from an early age can play a critical role in this shift. When children grow up understanding where food comes from, the value of seasonal and local diets, and the connections between agriculture, nutrition, and ecology, they are more likely to make informed and responsible choices as consumers and citizens. In doing so, food cultures can move away from patterns of overconsumption and ecological strain towards more balanced and responsible ways of eating.

That means investing in climate-resilient agriculture, soil restoration, water stewardship, decentralized processing, inclusive finance, and stronger market linkages for smallholders. Farmers need not just advice but also credit, risk-sharing, insurance, and viable incentives that make sustainable practices economically feasible. Without these enabling conditions, resilience remains an expectation placed on farmers without the support required to achieve it.

Gastronomy, too, must evolve from celebrating taste alone to celebrating taste with responsibility. A more climate-intelligent food culture can elevate seasonal and local sourcing, restore dignity to indigenous crops, normalize biodiversity on the plate, and reconnect taste with terroir, ecology, and farmer livelihoods. At its best, gastronomy does not just shape preferences; it shapes values. It can move societies away from a vicious cycle of overconsumption, waste, and ecological strain towards a more virtuous cycle, one that values diversity, respects producers, and aligns consumption with planetary boundaries.

“The most meaningful culinary leadership may not come from the most elaborate plate — but from the plate that best understands its relationship with the planet.”

Food is our most intimate daily encounter with the environment. If we want a more sustainable world, we must ask not only what we eat but what our food system is costing the Earth, and what it could heal if reimagined well. From farm to fork, from field to festival, from kitchen to climate: the future of sustainability may well be decided on our plates.

References

1. FAO. 2025. FAO Statistical Yearbook 2025. Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome. https://openknowledge.fao.org/bitstreams/1c056d73-8b8a-40a8-b988-0a0809a14fba/download

2. FAO & UNFCCC. 2024. Climate Technologies for Agrifood Systems Transformation. Rome. https://unfccc.int/ttclear/misc_/StaticFiles/gnwoerk_static/TEC_WEF/4ba082ff54714373ae717ca999b44ef3/a04e2613d1ff4e00908adea0848ef244.pdf

3. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2025. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (SOFI 2025). Rome, FAO.

https://www.fao.org/publications/sofi

4. UNEP & WRAP. 2024. Food Waste Index Report 2024: Think Eat Save. UNEP, Nairobi. https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/food-waste-index-report-2024

5. Government of India. 2024. Economic Survey 2023–24. Ministry of Finance, New Delhi. https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/

6. MicroSave Consulting (MSC). 2025. Climate Change & Sustainability — Capability Statement. MSC, New Delhi. https://www.microsave.net/sectors/climate-change-and-sustainability/

7. MicroSave Consulting (MSC). 2026. Building India’s Climate Stack — Why Agriculture Comes First. MSC Blog, March 2026. https://www.microsave.net/2026/03/11/building-indias-climate-stack-why-agriculture-comes-first/

8. FAO. 2021. Small family farmers produce a third of the world’s food. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/small-family-farmers-produce-a-third-of-the-world-s-food/en

Copyright images: Chindu Chandran