The world observes World Food Day today (October 16), and this year’s theme, ‘Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow’, reminds us to rethink what food security really means.
The future of food cannot be secured by simply producing more food and ignoring what ultimately matters most. It is about ensuring that the food we produce is nutritious, affordable, accessible and available to everyone.
The fundamental challenge goes far beyond how much food we produce. For decades, the food-security debate has generally centred on food production. How much wheat, rice and sugarcane did we produce? Are our national food stocks sufficient? These questions are important, but they tell only part of the story. The more important question is: are we ensuring that people can actually eat well?
For a household struggling to meet its basic needs, food security should not be measured in tons, percentages or national production figures. It should be measured in something far more personal: what is on the table, how often there is enough to eat, and whether that food is nutritious enough to sustain a healthy life. This brings us to the bigger question that Pakistan must confront: Can we build a food system that truly nourishes everyone, even as our climate continues to change?
This challenge is significant today more than ever in Pakistan. This is a country which produces about 30 million tons of wheat and 10 million tons of rice, yet still has 40 per cent of children stunted due to chronic malnutrition; about half of the children suffer from nutrient deficiencies; and the country ranks 106th out of 123 countries, placing it in the serious hunger category. Climate change brings more frequent floods, heatwaves, droughts and water stress; the gap between producing food and ensuring nutrition is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
This is where innovation becomes essential to the future of our food system. Innovation should not just be limited to new seeds, machinery or digital technologies; it must transform the way we think about food itself. We need to innovate in what we grow, how we produce it, how efficiently we use water and other resources, how food reaches consumers, how farmers manage climate risks, and how vulnerable families are protected when shocks occur. Ultimately, innovation must help us move from simply producing more food to producing better food, reducing waste, strengthening livelihoods and ensuring that nutritious food remains affordable and accessible to all.
In this sense, the theme of World Food Day 2026 also calls on our universities and research institutions not only to generate knowledge about the food system of tomorrow, but also to help build it. This is where academia can contribute even more. Universities can serve as platforms that bring stakeholders together to develop solutions that are scientifically sound, economically viable and socially inclusive.
Pakistan has considerable scientific capacity to respond to emerging food-system challenges. Pakistani universities and research institutions are already contributing meaningfully to this agenda. Researchers across the country are developing climate-resilient crop varieties, water-saving technologies, precision and digital agriculture, sustainable farming practices and food-processing solutions.
The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF) is Pakistan’s leading agricultural university in combating food insecurity and climate vulnerability. The university is actively addressing malnutrition by researching functional foods and fortifying staple crops with essential vitamins and minerals.
The UAF has successfully registered and commercialised several climate-resilient and nutrient-dense crop varieties. For instance, Chenab Pasta-24 (Durum Wheat) is a newly developed durum wheat variety engineered to be drought- and heat-tolerant. International collaboration is developing zinc- and iron-biofortified wheat lines to directly combat micronutrient deficiencies. Scientists introduced and commercialised a quinoa variety adapted to dry, arid regions. The university has introduced and deployed heat-tolerant strains of soybeans, brassica, industrial hemp, chickpea, and sorghum to reduce dependence on agricultural imports while diversifying local food systems against climate shocks.
Introducing raised-bed and bed-furrow technologies, which shift cultivation from conventional flat fields to raised beds, offers a practical example of how agricultural innovation can strengthen climate resilience. These systems reduce water use by around 40 per cent while increasing grain yields by 10–20 per cent, largely through improved soil aeration and better control of moisture around the root zone.
Another promising example is Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), a water-saving irrigation approach for rice that replaces the traditional practice of keeping paddy fields continuously flooded with controlled wetting-and-drying cycles. AWD offers an important pathway towards more sustainable rice production.
Such innovations are particularly relevant for Pakistan, where increasing water scarcity makes producing more with less water an urgent priority. The agricultural universities and research institutes are promoting these technologies to address growing water scarcity and make the food system more resource-efficient and climate-resilient.
Despite these significant efforts, the policy focus in Pakistan remains largely centred on increasing agricultural production and securing staple food supplies. At the same time, a major challenge lies in policy implementation. Food, agriculture, water, climate, health, nutrition and social protection are closely connected, yet institutions often plan and implement them separately, with limited coordination and information sharing. As a result, good policies and promising innovations do not always translate into integrated action on the ground. Stronger coordination among agriculture, livestock, climate, health, food and nutrition and social-protection institutions, supported by universities, research organisations, and the private sector and farming communities, is essential.
We now need to broaden this approach and put nutrition, dietary diversity, resource efficiency, affordability, and climate resilience at the heart of food policy. The goal should not simply be to produce more food, but to build a food system that can nourish people and withstand tomorrow’s climate challenges. This requires rethinking food security beyond production, and placing nutrition, affordability and diversity at its centre.
The true measure of our food system’s success should not be how much food we produce, but whether every household can access safe, affordable and nutritious food. That is what it means to innovate today and truly nourish tomorrow.
The writer teaches at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad and is a consultant at SDPI, Islamabad.
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