Ensuring Long-term Food Security: Sustainable Practices and Policies

Food security is often understood as having enough to eat today. But a fuller picture asks a harder question: can a country keep feeding everyone for decades without exhausting the soil, water, and forests that make food possible in the first place? This is the heart of sustainable food security. It means maintaining adequate physical and economic access to food right now, while protecting the natural resources that future generations will depend on. For a nation feeding over 1.4 billion people, with more than half its workforce tied to agriculture, this balance is not optional. It is a developmental necessity.

What sustainable food security actually means 🔗

The widely accepted definition of food security rests on four pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability. Availability asks whether enough food exists through production, imports, and reserves. Access concerns whether people can physically and economically obtain it. Utilization looks at nutrition, food safety, and the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. Stability ties these together over time, ensuring that supply does not collapse during droughts, floods, or economic shocks.

In recent years, experts have argued that these four pillars miss something essential. The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition proposed adding two more dimensions: agency and sustainability. Sustainability here refers to the long-term viability of the ecological and social foundations of food systems. A harvest that depletes groundwater or strips the soil of nutrients may feed people this year, but it borrows from tomorrow. The Food and Agriculture Organization frames sustainable food and agriculture as contributing to all four pillars while respecting the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability.

This is the distinction that matters. Producing more grain is not the same as producing it sustainably. Sustainable food security insists that current consumption must not compromise future availability.

The indicators that signal sustainability 🔗

Because sustainability is abstract, researchers and policymakers rely on measurable indicators to track whether a food system is on a healthy path. Several of these are especially relevant in the Indian context.

Area under forests 🔗

Forests and agriculture together account for nearly 80% of India’s geographical area, with about 24.56% under forest cover and roughly 55% as agricultural land. Forests are not separate from food systems. They regulate rainfall, protect watersheds, prevent soil erosion, and support biodiversity that pollinates crops. A shrinking forest area is an early warning that the resource base for agriculture is weakening. Conversely, maintaining or expanding forest and tree cover strengthens the ecological buffer that keeps farms productive.

Groundwater exploitation levels 🔗

Groundwater is the single most important source of irrigation in many parts of the country, and it is under severe stress. The arid regions of the north-west, especially Punjab and Haryana, illustrate the problem starkly: rice covers around 75% of the net cropped area in zones with low rainfall, sustained almost entirely by groundwater pumped using subsidised electricity. This model boosted production during the Green Revolution but is now drawing water faster than it can be replenished. The level of groundwater development, often expressed as the ratio of extraction to recharge, is therefore a critical sustainability indicator. When extraction consistently exceeds recharge, the system is living on borrowed time.

Area under leguminous crops 🔗

The crops a region grows say a lot about its long-term soil health. Leguminous crops such as pulses, lentils, and beans have a natural ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. This reduces dependence on chemical nitrogen fertilisers, improves soil structure, and breaks the cycle of nutrient depletion caused by continuous cereal cultivation. A larger area under legumes generally signals a more balanced and self-renewing farming system. The dominance of water-hungry, fertiliser-intensive monocultures, by contrast, points toward fragility.

Percentage of degraded land 🔗

Perhaps the most sobering indicator is the extent of land degradation. In India, around 97.85 million hectares of land have already been degraded, an area roughly two and a half times the size of Rajasthan. More than half of this degraded land is either rainfed farmland that underpins food production or forest land that defends against climate change. Land degradation neutrality, the goal of balancing degradation with restoration, has become a key target under the Sustainable Development Goals precisely because degraded land undermines ecosystems, food security, and livelihoods together.

Why the current model strains the future 🔗

The Green Revolution transformed the country from a food-deficit nation into a self-sufficient one. But the same system created lasting pressures. The reliance on a narrow set of crops, heavy fertiliser use, and intensive groundwater irrigation produced impressive yields while quietly eroding the natural base. As the WRI notes, there is now clear evidence of increasing water scarcity, depleting groundwater tables, and inequity in water use among crops.

The livelihood dimension makes this even more urgent. Around 85% of farmers are small and marginal landholders cultivating less than two hectares, and nearly 70% of rural households depend on land for sustenance. For these families, soil degradation or a falling water table is not an abstract environmental statistic. It is a direct threat to income and survival. Sustainable food security, therefore, is inseparable from sustainable livelihoods.

Practices that sustain productivity 🔗

The good news is that the tools for a more durable food system already exist. They centre on conserving the three pillars of any farm: soil, water, and biodiversity.

Soil preservation and health management 🔗

Healthy soil is the foundation of lasting productivity. Practices such as integrated nutrient management, balanced fertiliser use, crop residue management, and the application of organic manures and bio-fertilisers help maintain soil fertility instead of depleting it. Soil degradation is a direct driver of food insecurity, and improving land management is one of the most effective ways to reverse it.

Efficient water use 🔗

Since groundwater overextraction is among the biggest threats, water efficiency is essential. Micro-irrigation methods like drip and sprinkler systems deliver water directly to plant roots, cutting waste dramatically. Traditional rainwater harvesting structures, such as check dams and underground storage tanks long used in the drylands of Rajasthan, also help recharge aquifers. One striking insight from research is that shifting where certain crops are grown could help meet procurement targets while arresting groundwater depletion, since allowing irrigation increases average net farm income by about 30% when crops are matched to the right geographies.

Eco-friendly and diversified farming 🔗

Diversifying away from monocultures toward integrated and climate-resilient farming systems spreads risk and protects the environment. Approaches like organic farming and natural farming reduce dependence on agrochemicals while maintaining yields. Crop rotation that includes legumes restores nitrogen naturally. Agroforestry, which combines trees with crops, links the forest cover indicator directly to farm productivity.

Policies linking production, livelihood, and environment 🔗

Effective food security strategy must do two things at once: raise production and protect the resource base. India’s policy framework reflects this through several initiatives. The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), operational since 2014-15 under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, aims to make agriculture more productive, sustainable, and climate resilient by promoting soil and moisture conservation, comprehensive soil health management, and efficient water practices.

Within this mission, the Soil Health Card scheme, launched in 2015, gives farmers detailed reports on their soil’s nutrient status, analysing parameters like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, pH, and organic carbon, along with crop-specific fertiliser recommendations. According to a recent assessment, around 257.9 million Soil Health Cards had been issued by early 2026, and a NITI Aayog evaluation found the programme helped reduce excessive urea use while improving productivity. Complementary efforts such as the Per Drop More Crop component for water efficiency and Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana for organic farming round out the approach.

The deeper principle behind good policy is integration. Food production, livelihood access, and environmental health cannot be treated as separate goals. A scheme that boosts yields by accelerating groundwater depletion solves one problem while worsening another. Sustainable food security is achieved only when environmental conservation actively supports, rather than competes with, the goal of feeding everyone over the long term.

What do you think? If a region must choose between maximising this year’s grain output and protecting its groundwater for the next generation, how should that trade-off be decided, and who should decide it? Which single indicator – forest cover, groundwater levels, legume area, or degraded land – do you believe best reflects whether a food system is truly sustainable?

References

1. https://www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/insights/news-insights/news-detail/ensuring-food-security–why-agency-and-sustainability-matter/en
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919221001445
3. https://www.fao.org/sustainability
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622823002461
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9192749/
6. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10185291241307272
7. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44378-025-00078-9
8. https://wri-india.org/perspectives/decoding-sustainable-food-systems
9. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1556469
10. https://opengovasia.com/indias-national-mission-for-sustainable-agriculture-strengthens-climate-resilient-farming/