A new report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, entitled Investing to Nourish India’s Cities, argues that substantial public investments are needed to address food system inefficiencies and improve food and nutrition security in urban India.

Over 400 million people live in India’s cities—more than the entire population of the United States—and India is forecast to experience the largest increase in urban population of any country in the world. However, the majority of urban residents do not achieve the daily caloric intake or the dietary diversity recommended by India’s National Institute of Nutrition. The poorest urban residents in India consume, on average, 55 percent fewer calories than wealthier ones.

To better organize the Indian food system such that it is able to deliver healthy foods affordably to India’s cities, the report recommends the following:

• Investment in food storage, handling, and transportation infrastructure, including cold chain technology;
• Greater attention to value-added processing, which offers opportunities to mainstream micronutrients into the diet by fortifying widely consumed staples with vitamins and minerals;
• Reforms to government procurement, tariff, and tax policies that affect urban food delivery, as well as policies to enhance food testing capacity; and
• Improvements to India’s regulatory environment related to vertically integrated sourcing, modern logistics services, large-scale food processing, and retail efficiencies to attract private investment.
   

This report expands upon the Council’s focus on how global agriculture can develop to feed the world’s cities, as presented in the recent report, “Growing Food for Growing Cities,” released at the Council’s annual Global Food Security Symposium. It offered recommendations as to how the United States can lead efforts to invest in policies, infrastructure, enterprises, trade capacity, and research to transform agricultural supply chains in low-and-middle income countries.

The report was authored by Andrea Durkin, nonresident senior fellow at the Council and principal of Sparkplug, LLC. From 1996 to 2004, Durkin served as a trade negotiator with the Office of the United States Trade Representation and the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce. Support for the author’s research for the production of this study is provided by Abbott.