Value Chains

Food systems play an important role in shaping our diets. Recently, there has been growing attention to food systems transformation, which involves changing different components of global food systems to make nutritious foods more accessible to consumers. At the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, more than 100 countries pledged to transform their food systems, a clear recognition of the importance of healthy diets in preventing all forms of malnutrition worldwide.

In the last few years Asia’s food security has suffered a series of crises induced by conflict, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, causing great disruptions to food supply systems and increasing  the number of people experiencing food insecurity. Now, pressure at four global ‘food chokepoints’—in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal due to geopolitical unrest, and the Panama Canal and the Mississippi River due to drought—are threatening Asia’s food security even more.

India’s import demand for edible oils has been significant over the past decade, with imports averaging $11.6 billion annually. In 2021, prior to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India imported a staggering $17.1 billion of edible oils (Figure 1), dominated by palm oil ($9.6 billion), soybean oil ($4.8 billion), and sunflower/safflower oils ($2.4 billion).