On World Food Day, 16 October 2026, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has chosen the theme “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.”

The urgency is unmistakable. According to the FAO’s latest assessment, approximately 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, while billions struggled to afford a healthy diet. The challenge is no longer simply producing more food, but ensuring that agricultural growth remains sustainable, nutritious and accessible. Two countries with contrasting agricultural experiences, India and Israel, offer an important starting point. One has demonstrated the power of production at scale; the other has developed techniques to cultivate crops under severe resource constraints. Together, their experiences offer lessons for a water-stressed world.

India’s agricultural transformation is one of the most significant achievements of its post-independence development. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s combined high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilisers and public support systems to transform a food-deficit nation into a major agricultural producer. That transformation continues. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare’s Third Advance Estimates for 2025–26, India’s food grain production is estimated at a record 376.56 million tonnes, approximately 18.8 million tonnes higher than the previous year. Rice production alone is estimated at 154.02 million tonnes. These figures reflect decades of scientific research, institutional investment and the efforts of millions of farmers across India.

Yet this achievement has come with mounting environmental pressures. India is the world’s largest extractor of groundwater (approx 250 Billion Cubic Metre), with agriculture accounting for the overwhelming majority of withdrawals. The consequences are particularly visible in Punjab, where the Central Ground Water Board’s 2024 assessment found that annual groundwater extraction stood at 156.87 per cent of annual extractable groundwater resources.........

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