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