India Leads The Way In Sustainable Food Practices: WWF Report

India's food consumption pattern is increasingly being recognised as a model of sustainability. In a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), India emerged as one of the most sustainable in terms of food production and consumption practices. Thanks to India’s rich traditions and cultures of following a plant-based diet and relying more on locally sourced food items which helps to reduce the daily production of waste. As highlighted in the WWF report, the trends set by Indian food practices are a testament to the world's current standing and switch to more sustainable systems to protect the environment, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

WWF Report On India’s Food Sustainability

The Living Plante Report released by WWF states, “The Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) initiative in southern India is a good example of the positive socio-economic impacts of nature-positive food production. APCNF is a statewide effort to support farmers to adopt agroecological practices to address multiple challenges such as rural livelihoods, access to nutritious food, biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity and pollution. It is the largest transition to agroecology in the world, involving 630,000 farmers. The impacts have been impressive: crop diversity has doubled, yields of prime crops increased by an average of 11%, farmers’ net income increased by 49% and household dietary diversity increased.”

Also Read: A 10-Step Guide to Sustainable Cooking

India And Its Environment-Friendly Eating Habits

Sustainability has become a critical topic of discussion worldwide, particularly regarding food production and consumption. The industrialised food systems in many parts of the world are major contributors to climate change, responsible for nearly 25% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As per reports, the human dependence on resource-intensive food production, like meat and dairy leads to a shortage of global water resources, deforestation and also causes a loss of biodiversity.

While the overbearing statistics are an alarming cause of global concern, as the WWF report, India’s food consumption and production systems have been lauded for being the most environment-friendly. The centuries-old practices which are still followed by the Indian population are remarkable.

The report suggests, “Eating more sustainable diets would reduce the amount of land needed to produce food: grazing land, in particular, could be freed up for other purposes, including nature restoration and carbon sequestration. Seafood choices can make a difference too: for example by prioritising farmed species low on the aquatic food chain, such as bivalves (like oysters, mussels and scallops), that produce food more quickly and with fewer inputs, and excluding long-lived, slow-growing species (such as Chilean sea bass, Atlantic halibut, bluefin tuna and swordfish).”

Highlighting India as a sustainable example, the report further discusses, “The National Millet Campaign in India is designed to increase national consumption of this ancient grain, which is good for health and highly resilient in the face of climate change. In other countries, an important area of focus is developing and promoting healthy alternative protein sources such as legumes and Nutri-cereals, plant-based meat alternatives, and algal species high in nutritional value.”