Abstract
Sustainable development of India’s food system must ensure a growing population is fed while minimizing both widespread malnutrition and the environmental impacts of food production. After assessing current adequacy of nutrient supplies at the national level, associated natural resource use (land, fresh water) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we apply an integrated subnational environmental and nutritional optimization approach to explore resource constraints that might limit the achievement of national food self-sufficiency goals. We find that India currently has the capacity to produce sufficient amounts of nutritious foods, supplying vitamins and minerals that would mostly exceed requirements. Regional cropland use could be reduced by up to 50%, water demand by up to 65% and combined resource inputs by up to 40% while still supporting adequate nutrition. Associated GHG emissions would decline by 26–34% and could possibly be sequestered in agroforestry systems. Such dietary shifts could lower the number of diet-related premature deaths by 14–30%. Achieving these potential gains, however, would require a major transition from current production and consumption patterns, particularly of refined cereals, to free-up resources for more traditional and nutritious foods.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its Supplementary Information.
Code availability
Code used for this study is included in the Supplementary methods.
References
FAO Statistical Database (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011–2013); http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home
National Food Security Bill Registered Number DL-(N)04/0007/2003-13 (Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice, 10 September 2013).
Bhattacharyya, R. et al. Soil degradation in India: challenges and potential solutions. Sustainability 7, 3528–3570 (2015).
Khajuria, A. Impact of nitrate consumption: case study of Punjab, India. J. Water Resour. Prot. 8, 211–216 (2016).
Davis, K. F. et al. Alternative cereals can improve water use and nutrient supply in India. Sci. Adv. 4, eaao1108 (2018).
Caulfield, L. E. in Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries 2nd edn (eds Jamison, D. T., et al.) Ch. 28 (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank, 2006).
Green, R. et al. Dietary patterns in India: a systematic review. Br. J. Nutr. 116, 142–148 (2016).
Naik, S., Mahalle, N. & Bhide, V. Identification of vitamin B12 deficiency in vegetarian Indians. Br. J. Nutr. 119, 1–7 (2018).
DeFries, R. et al. Impact of historical changes in coarse cereals consumption in India on micronutrient intake and anemia prevalence. Food Nutr. Bull. 39, 377–392 (2018).
Smith, M. R. et al. Inadequate zinc intake in India: past, present, and future. Food Nutr. Bull. 40, 26–40 (2019).
India: National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015–16 (International Institute for Population Sciences, 2017).
Akhtar, S. et al. Prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in South Asia: causes, outcomes, and possible remedies. J. Health Popul. Nutr. 31, 413–423 (2013).
India: Health of the Nation’s States—The Indian State-Level Disease Burden Initiative (Indian Council of Medical Research, Public Health Foundation of India and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2017).
Riahi, K. et al. The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: an overview. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 153–168 (2017).
Sengupta, P. & Mukhopadhyay, K. Economic and environmental impact of National Food Security Act of India. Agric. Food Econ. 4, 1–23. (2016).
Rao, N. D. et al. Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India. Glob. Environ. Change 49, 154–165 (2018).
Vetter, S. H. et al. Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural food production to supply Indian diets: Implications for climate change mitigation. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 237, 234–241 (2017).
Harris, F. et al. The water use of Indian diets and socio-demographic factors related to dietary blue water footprint. Sci. Total. Environ. 587–588, 128–136 (2017).
Davis, K. F. et al. Assessing the sustainability of post-Green Revolution cereals in India. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 25034–25041 (2019).
Milner, J. et al. Projected health effects of realistic dietary changes to address freshwater constraints in India: a modelling study. Lancet Planet. Health 1, e26–e32 (2017).
Aleksandrowicz, L. et al. A modelling study using nationally-representative data. Environ. Int. 126, 207–215 (2019).
Green, R. et al. Greenhouse gas emissions and water footprints of typical dietary patterns in India. Sci. Total. Environ. 643, 1411–1418 (2018).
Ritchie, H. et al. Sustainable food security in India—domestic production and macronutrient availability. PLoS ONE 13, e0193766 (2018a).
Ritchie, H. et al. Quantifying, projecting, and addressing India’s hidden hunger. Front. Sustain. Food Sys. 2, 11 (2018b).
Springmann, M. et al. Health and nutritional aspects of sustainable diet strategies and their association with environmental impacts: a global modelling analysis with country-level detail. Lancet Planet. Health 2, e451–e461 (2018).
Household Consumption of Various Goods and Service in India 2011–12. NSS 68th Round (Government of India, 2014).
Rosa, L. et al. Closing the yield gap while ensuring water sustainability. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 104002 (2018).
Mason-D’Croz, D. et al. Gaps between fruit and vegetable production, demand, and recommended consumption at global and national levels: an integrated modelling study. Lancet Planet. Health 3, e318–e329 (2019).
Sapkota, T. P. et al. Cost-effective opportunities for climate change mitigation in Indian agriculture. Sci. Total. Environ. 655, 1342–1354 (2019).
Willett, W. et al. Food in the anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet Comm. 393, P447–P492 (2019).
Ahmad, F., Uddin, Md. M., Goparaju, L., Rizvi, J. & Biradar, C. Quantification of the land potential for scaling agroforestry in South Asia. J. Cartogr. Geogr. Inf. 70, 81–89 (2020).
Sharma, B. et al. Comparative study of mango based agroforestry and mono-cropping system under rainfed condition of West Bengal. Int. J. Plant. Soil. Sci. 15, 1–7 (2017).
Chirwa, P. W. et al. Tree and crop productivity in gliricidia/maize/pigeonpea cropping systems in southern Malawi. Agrofor. Syst. 59, 265–277 (2003).
Chiuve S. E. et al. Alternative dietary indices both strongly predict risk of chronic disease. J. Nutr. 142, 1009–1018 (2012).
Wang, D. D. et al. Global improvement in dietary quality could lead to substantial reduction in premature death. J. Nutr. 149, 1065–1074 (2019).
Pingali, P., Aiyar, A., Abraham, M. & Rahman, A. Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019).
Bowen, L. et al. Dietary intake and rural–urban migration in India: a cross-sectional study. PLoS ONE 6, e14822 (2010).
Singh, A.et al. Quantitative estimates of dietary intake with special emphasis on snacking pattern and nutritional status of free living adults in urban slums of Delhi: impact of nutrition transition. BMC Nutr. 1, (2015)..
Rawal, V. et al. Prevalence of undernourishment in Indian states: explorations based on NSS 68th round data. Econ. Polit. Wkly 54, 35–45 (2019).
The Global Dietary Database—Global Dietary Intakes, Diseases, and Policies among Children, Women, and Men (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2016); http://www.globaldietarydatabase.org/the-global-dietary-database-measuring-diet-worldwide.html
Demographic Statistics Database (United Nations Statistics Division, accessed September 2018); http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3a22
Lonnie, M. et al. Protein for life: Review of optimal protein intake, sustainable dietary sources and the effect on appetite in ageing adults. Nutrients 10, 360 (2018).
Longvah, T. et al. Indian Food Composition Tables (National Institute of Nutrition, 2017).
Food Composition Database (United States Department of Agriculture, 2016); https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/
Human Vitamin and Mineral Requirements. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation, Bangkok, Thailand (World Health Organization, 2001).
Nutrient Index (Oregon State University, 2018); https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/nutrient-index
Statistical Year Book India 2018 (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, 2019).
Suresh, K. P. et al. Modeling and forecasting livestock feed resources in India using climate variables. Asian-Aust J. Anim. Sci. 25, 462–470 (2012).
Mekonnen, M. M. & Hoekstra, A. Y. National Water Footprint Accounts: The Green, Blue and Grey Water Footprint of Production and Consumption (Value of Water Research Report Series Number 50) (UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, 2011).
Pastor, A. V. et al. Accounting for environmental flow requirements in global water assessments. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 18, 5041–5059 (2014).
Briscoe, J. & Malik, R. P. S. India’s Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).
Vetter, S. H. et al. Corrigendum to “Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural food production to supply Indian diets: implications for climate change mitigation” [Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 237 (2017) 234–241]. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 272, 83–85 (2019).
Herrero, M. et al. Biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock systems. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci USA 110, 20888–20893 (2013).
Renard, C. Crop Residues in Sustainable Mixed Crop/Livestock Farming Systems (CABI, 1997).
Smil, V. Crop residues: agriculture’s largest harvest. BioScience 49, 299–308 (1991).
R: A language and environment for statistical computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2016).
Haskell, M. J. The challenge to reach nutritional adequacy for vitamin A: β-carotene bioavailability and conversion—evidence in humans. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 96, 1193S–1203S (2012).
Schwalfenberg, G. K. Vitamins K1 and K2: the emerging group of vitamins required for human health. J. Nutr. Metab. 2017, 6254836 (2017).
Bakshi, M. P. S. Waste to worth: vegetable wastes as animal feed. CAB Rev. 11, 1–26 (2016).
Dikshit, A. K. & Birthal, P. S. India’s livestock feed demand: estimates and projections. Agric. Econ. Res. Rev. 23, 15–28 (2010).
Nair, P. K. R. et al. Soil carbon sequestration in tropical agroforestry systems: a feasibility appraisal. Environ. Sci. Pol. 12, 1099–1111 (2009).
Murthy, I. K. et al. Carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems in India. Earth Sci. Clim. Change 4, 1000131 (2013).
Acknowledgements
We thank the Rockefeller Foundation for financial support. We are grateful for F. Harris and A. Dangour providing a critical review and advice on our analysis. We thank D. Wang for his support with the addition of health outcome estimates to our dietary data, M. Smith for his advice on the use of his dataset and C. Watson for providing complementary research on agroforestry systems.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
K.D., S.S.M. and W.W. designed the study. K.D. developed the modelling approach. K.D., K.F.D., C.G. and M.H. collected and managed data. K.D. and K.F.D. analysed water-use data; K.D., C.G. and M.H. processed livestock emission data. K.D., W.W. and S.N.B. evaluated diet-related health risk data. K.D. wrote the draft and designed the graphs and maps. K.D., K.F.D., C.G., M.H., M.S., S.N.B., S.S.M. and W.W. contributed to the writing of the paper.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary background information, results, discussion and methods of analysis.
Supplementary Data
We provide generated data on regional and national environmental footprints, national food exports, an analysis on cost of cultivation, dietary adequacy of current and modelled food supplies, and estimates on potential diet-related health risk reductions.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Damerau, K., Davis, K.F., Godde, C. et al. India has natural resource capacity to achieve nutrition security, reduce health risks and improve environmental sustainability. Nat Food 1, 631–639 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-00157-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-00157-w
This article is cited by
-
Research progress in assessment and strategies for sustainable food system within planetary boundaries
Science China Earth Sciences (2024)
-
Fresh-Cut Vegetables and Fruits: Do They Really Meet Sustainability and Nutritional Benefits?
Current Food Science and Technology Reports (2024)
-
Historical shifting in grain mineral density of landmark rice and wheat cultivars released over the past 50 years in India
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Sustainable Food Systems: The Way Forward in the Indian Context
Indian Pediatrics (2023)
-
Pathway to achieve a sustainable food and land-use transition in India
Sustainability Science (2023)