World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 7

Editors’ Introduction
of food security and safety; second two lead papers on both China and India and
remaining six papers deal with specific policy aspects of food security in the two
countries.
The first paper by Mark Rosegrant is focused on three major aspects of
global food insecurity. First, it briefly describes the status of food security at the
global level, second, it addresses major challenges to food security and third, it
introduces models suitable to assess the impact of food security related invest-
ments and policies. The paper concludes that population and income growth
are the two major drivers for the growth in future food demand. While food
and nutrition security are projected to improve, the risks emerging from cli-
mate change will slow this progress. Both agricultural investments in research
and development, roads, electricity, irrigation and water use efficiency, in com-
bination with supportive policies that redirect inefficient subsidies to produc-
tivity-enhancing investments are needed to achieve the goal of eliminating food
insecurity. He also emphasizes the need for dietary changes to reduce green-
house gases and he points out the supportive role of free trade considering that
climate change will increase the need for food imports by some developing
countries.
The second paper by Carl Pray emphasizes the role of multinational cor-
porations for bringing advanced agricultural technology to China and India. The
paper notes that India has had a much more liberal policy on foreign investment
in recent years which resulted in more access to research and technology devel-
oped by multinational corporations while China has been less open in this regard.
Strengthening of food safety and environmental regulations and their enforce-
ment remains a concern both for farmers’ access to new technology and their safe
use as well as consumer’s protection from health and environmental risk. In the
absence of empirical evidence of the impact of open policies towards multination-
al corporations for the benefits to farmers in developing countries and emerging
market economies the paper emphasizes the urgent need for scientific studies as a
basis for evidence based policy making.
Paper number three is by Jikun Huang and deals with transformation paths
of the rural economies in Asian countries including China and India. The paper
argues that while there is a general trend of rural transformation in Asia the paths
differ. Also, in each stage of rural transformation, there are specific institutions,
policies and investments required to speed up the transformation process. Most
importantly however the paper emphasizes that rural transformation and struc-
tural transformation of the economy as a whole are interconnected, such that suc-
cessful structural transformation can stimulate economic growth and the former
can enhance rural transformation through labor-intensive industrialization. Last-
ly, rural transformation is a key driver for rural poverty reduction and therefore
more inclusiveness growth.
3