Growing our Future India

Growing our Future India: Accelerating the transition to regenerative food and agriculture

Agriculture and food sector in India is at a decisive point. While input-intensive agriculture played a historic role in achieving food security and enabling India’s rise as a net food exporter, it has also created structural risks that now threaten productivity, supply security and long-term economic stability. Today, India faces rapidly escalating soil, water, biodiversity and human health crisis, putting the future of Indian farming at risk.

Climate change is amplifying these challenges. Increasingly erratic weather patterns, droughts and floods are disrupting crop cycles and harming farmer livelihoods. Smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of Indian agriculture, are most at risk in the face of these shocks. Limited access to credit, technology and markets leaves them vulnerable to disruption and in financial distress.

To address these urgent and competing needs, India faces a critical choice: continue relying on input-intensive practices or adopt a food systems approach towards agroecology. In recent years, there has been a global shift from a siloed and linear view of food and nutrition challenges to a more integrated, systems-based perspective. This approach recognises the interconnectedness of agricultural practices, environmental sustainability, and economic viability, allowing for more comprehensive solutions that support resilience and equity within the agricultural sector.

Our approach

Within this national context, Growing our Future India is working to shape a more inclusive, resilient and regenerative food and agriculture system. Our work focuses particularly on Madhya Pradesh, a state with significant agricultural potential and strong grassroots leadership.

Growing our Future Madhya Pradesh (GoF MP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative that brings diverse actors already driving change in food and agricultural systems. The platform enables them to align around a shared vision for the future and coordinate efforts to catalyse system-level transformation. Through access to insights, resources and expertise, the programme helps stakeholders move from isolated interventions to collective impact.

Launched in 2023, Growing our Future has convened over 40 key food system actors across government, markets and civil society in Madhya Pradesh. Through dialogue, systems mapping and collaborative design, GoF MP has helped stakeholders understand their role in within the wider ecosystem and identify where and how their actions can create meaningful, lasting change.

Key insights: What did we uncover?

Phase 1: Mapping the landscape

Phase 1 identified areas of acceleration and bottlenecks across the state’s food and agriculture sector. The work provided critical insights into the current state of the agroecological transition, the principles needed to guide it and the priorities demanding urgent attention.

Phase 2: Deepening the transition

Building on these insights, Phase 2 focused ondeepening and accelerating the agroecological transition, bringing together a cross-sector cohort including farmer producer organisations (FPOs), civil society organisations, funders and private sector. Through a collaborative approach, the cohort:

Co-created a shared vision for the future of agriculture in Madhya Pradesh
Identified the enablers needed to make this vision possible, developing pathways to help strengthen five key areas: bio-input ecosystems, farmer producer organisations, finance mechanisms, market infrastructure and consumer demand
Developed actionable interventions to accelerate the transition, including bio-resource centre hubs, dedicated farmer producer organisation capacity building centres, and farmer centred date commons

What is next

A resilient and inclusive food and agriculture system cannot emerge without strong, equitable demand-side signals. From companies shifting procurement models, to landscape-level incentives that de-risk farmer transitions, the demand-side has the power to unlock scale.

The next phase of Growing our Future aims to to bring together demand-side actors, market actors, industry leaders, financiers and consumer-facing institutions, to reimagine their role in shaping a regenerative food future. Leveraging our systems and futures expertise along with expert facilitation, we aim to enable this next phase of collective action.

Join us in accelerating India's shift to regenerative agriculture

If you are interested in:

investing in the pathways for agroecological transition

developing resilient sourcing models

supporting farmer-centred transition risks

co-creating innovative finance mechanisms

piloting demand led innovation in MP

We would like to collaborate with you.

Contact us at: [email protected]

Related links:

Forum for the Future's work on scaling just and regenerative food and farming
Growing our Future collaborations in the UK and US

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