Every October, as the apple season winds down in Kashmir, I pass trucks piled high with crates on their way out of the Valley. I also pass orchard edges and roadside heaps where bruised, surplus fruit is left to rot. That contrast stays with me as 16 October approaches. Every year, World Food Day asks one uncomfortable question: if the world already grows enough food for everyone, why do people still go hungry? The FAO’s theme for 2026, “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.”, suggests that the answer lies not only in how much we grow, but in how we produce, store, process, and share it.The numbers behind the theme are hard to ignore. About 645 million people still face hunger, and 2.69 billion, nearly one in three, cannot afford a healthy diet. Meanwhile, roughly 13 percent of the world’s food is lost after harvest, before it reaches a shop, and a further 19 percent is wasted at retail and in our homes. The world does not have a shortage of food. It has a shortage of ways to keep that food safe, use it fully and share it fairly.

Innovation is more than machinesWhen people hear “innovation”, they tend to picture drones, apps and gleaming laboratories. The FAO takes a broader view. Innovation includes better seeds and digital advice, but also farmer field schools, cooperatives and the traditional land and water practices that communities built over generations. It is the meeting of science with the experience of those who actually grow, harvest and cook our food.As a food technologist, I find this definition reassuring, because it matches what I see in my own work. The best ideas rarely come from the laboratory alone. They come when a researcher listens to a farmer, and a farmer is willing to try something new. Kashmir........

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