Soil degradation, resulting from poor land management practices such as the overuse of fertilizers, can worsen farm productivity. Yet, across India, efforts to improve soil quality have focused almost exclusively on chemical properties, ignoring the physical and biological processes that make soils dynamic and complex living systems.

In a normal summer, Tata-Cornell Institute (TCI) interns travel to rural India to work on research projects in the field. But with COVID-19 putting fieldwork on hold, interns Francesca DiGiorgio and Bhavna Sivasubramanian spent the summer of 2021 in TCI’s office at Cornell University, digging through data related to India’s agricultural markets. A graduate student…

Ensuring good nutrition during weaning can help set a child on the path of good health and development. Yet, when it comes time to wean babies from breast milk or formula, many parents reach for puffed cereal snacks that, while convenient, offer little nutritional benefit at a time when children’s protein requirement is at its peak.

TCI is exploring an innovative approach to curbing iron deficiency by fortifying wheat flour using a byproduct of the biofuel industry. Widely consumed and available through India’s Public Distribution System, wheat flour is an ideal vehicle for fortification.

In November 2020, tens of thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab and Haryana, flooded the streets of New Delhi holding signs that read “No Farmer No Food” and chanting “Dharti Mata Ki Jai.” Makeshift camps lined the outskirts of the city where food was cooked over small gas fires and nights were spent sleeping on…

On June 2, 2021, the Indian government announced a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for several key sectors of the economy. Under this scheme, the fuel companies will be required to sell gasoline containing up to 20 percent ethanol by 2023, with the view to reduce dependency on oil imports and lower carbon dioxide emissions in cities. (Ethanol adds extra oxygen to petrol which lowers the emission of harmful gases and is shown to significantly reduce air pollution.) This target implies that India will need 1,000 crore liters of ethanol against the nation’s current capacity of 684 crore liters.

Orange-fleshed sweet potato has shown great promise toward reducing vitamin A insufficiency in the diet when introduced to rural communities in developing regions, as an easy-to-cultivate crop and a tasty, affordable, healthy food. Although it has been successfully introduced in East Africa, where white-fleshed varieties of sweet potato are regularly consumed, Indian consumers have little to no experience with the tubers.

The Indian government’s plan to incentivize sugarcane production to boost the supply of fuel-grade ethanol could hurt efforts to improve nutrition outcomes in the country, according to researchers from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI). In an op-ed in the Financial Express, TCI consultant Payal Seth, Director Prabhu Pingali, and Associate Director Bhaskar…

Prabhu Pingali, director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), is featured in a new masterclass on the unintended consequences of food systems policies. Designed for stakeholders in food systems around the world, the class presents the 1960s Green Revolution as a case study. The masterclass is part of the Food Systems Game…

Providing people with access to affordable, nutritious food is only one step in improving nutrition outcomes. In countries like India, where the majority of people lack access to piped water in the home, waterborne diseases often interfere with people’s ability to absorb nutrients from the food they eat.