World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 9

Editors’ Introduction
interstate differences of nutritional outcomes. The paper impressively illustrates
the variation that exists on the sub-national level in terms of food security and
nutritional outcomes. It identifies two important causes of interstate differences,
namely governance structure and policy priorities, i.e. states with a more advanced
agricultural system and better public health services and higher levels of hygiene
perform have much better nutritional outcomes. Consequently, the authors call
for changing policy paradigms at the sub-national level to give more emphasis to
nutrition in agricultural policies.
Paper number eight by Sharma and Pingali draws attention to the effects
of climate change on food systems and food security in India. The paper fills an
important gap in the literature by looking beyond rice, wheat and maize. Using
district level data, the authors model the potential impacts of climate change on
17 crops in India. By doing so the authors are able to identify the degree of vul-
nerability to climate change of crops that are of local importance and that can en-
sure dietary diversity. In addition, the authors identify two representative climate
pathways. The paper points out a couple of points often ignored in other related
studies. For example, it is important to take into account both precipitation and
temperature extremes and analyze the impact of extreme weather events on food
production and malnutrition. Also, climate adaptation strategies require season-
al and regional targeting, again pointing out the importance not limiting assess-
ments to the national level.
The paper of Pradjot Jena brings in another angle of the food security com-
plex namely the socio economic implications of food safety standards in India.
The paper reviews the implications of food contamination events in India and
how well the regulatory system is able to deal with them. The author identifies
significant weaknesses in implementing regulatory measures in the food safety
regulations in India. He documents examples for such weaknesses such as that
regulations do not include agricultural producers and the lack of monitoring of
street food vendors. A particular problem is the lack of qualified food safety offi-
cers. The paper suggests more private-public partnership to promote the adoption
of a food traceability system and outlines how the Food Safety Act in India can be
made more effective.
The paper by Zhou et al deals with food safety issues in China. It nicely
complements the paper of Jena with a similar topic on India. The China paper
however is more general in its analysis. It starts out by illustrating the causes for a
growing consumer demand for food safety. The extremely fast change in the food
system in China made it very difficult to put in place an effective system of food
safety regulations and governance. The authors point out the huge challenge to de-
velop and implement food safety policies that can keep up with the complex food
systems including production, processing, transportation, sales and consumption.
The authors have four broad recommendations how the system in China could
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