Blog

Nov 28, 2025

When we think about food, it’s often about the plate in front of us: a home-cooked meal, a roadside snack, or a festive spread. But behind each bite lies a web of choices, systems, and relationships that determine not just what we eat, but how it’s grown, who benefits, and at what cost to people and the planet.

In 2021, the United Nations Food Systems Summit called for urgent transformation, a collective shift toward food systems that are healthy, equitable, and sustainable. In India, this moment sparked the birth of CoFTI – the Coalition for Food System Transformation in India.

CoFTI was formed as a space for unlikely allies – farmers and scientists, entrepreneurs and activists, policymakers and community leaders to work side by side. Its foundation rests on a simple yet powerful belief: no single actor can transform our food systems alone. Change requires trust, shared learning, and collective action.

This blog dives into the heart of CoFTI – its purpose, its vision, and its ambition and how they shape everything we do.

Our Purpose: Why We Exist

Food systems touch every part of life – health, livelihoods, culture, climate, and environment. Yet, they are under strain. We see malnutrition alongside rising obesity, small farmers struggling in the same markets as global giants, biodiversity loss from monocultures, and climate shocks that hit the most vulnerable first.

CoFTI’s purpose is to bridge divides and build a food system that serves human, societal, and planetary health.

That means:

• For people – ensuring everyone, especially the most vulnerable, has access to safe, affordable, and nutritious food.
• For society – protecting livelihoods, fostering inclusion, and respecting the cultures that shape our diets.
• For the planet – safeguarding biodiversity, restoring soil health, and cutting food loss and waste.

Transformation, for CoFTI, isn’t just a technical framework, it’s about trust. It’s about listening to those who have been left out of decision-making, creating spaces where farmer producer organisations, women’s self-help groups, small food businesses, and start-ups can work alongside big industry and policymakers.

It’s also about learning together – drawing from indigenous wisdom, cutting-edge research, and lived experiences to craft solutions that work in real-world contexts.

In short, we exist to create a food system where everyone has a seat at the table and every voice matters.

Our Vision: The Future We Strive For

CoFTI’s vision is simple in words, yet bold in scope: a just, inclusive, and resilient food system for India.

This vision imagines a future where:

• Farmers earn fair incomes and work in harmony with nature.
• Consumers, regardless of income, can choose from diverse, nutritious foods.
• Supply chains are shorter, fairer, and more transparent.
• Every part of the system from production to waste works in a circular, regenerative way.

It calls for shifts at every level:

• From extractive to regenerative farming prioritising soil health, water conservation, and agro-ecological practices over input-heavy methods.
• From standardised, industrial diets to diverse, culturally rooted ones celebrating local crops like millets, pulses, and traditional greens.
• From linear supply chains to circular economies where by-products and waste are repurposed into valuable resources.
• From nutrition as privilege to nutrition as a right, making healthy diets accessible and affordable to all.

But CoFTI’s vision is not a static endpoint. It’s a catalyst for action – a guiding light that reminds us why we experiment, pilot, and adapt. It challenges us to keep asking: Does this make the system fairer? More inclusive? More resilient?

Our Ambition: Where We’re Headed

If purpose is the “why” and vision is the “what,” ambition is the “how far we’re willing to go.” For CoFTI, the answer is: as far as it takes to make food systems work for all.

Our ambition is to:

• Ensure equitable access to good food – safe, nutritious, and culturally relevant food for every individual, especially the most marginalised.
• Secure nutrition security and food sovereignty – protecting the right of communities to define their food systems, crops, and diets.
• Mainstream diversity both in the foods on our plates and in the voices shaping the agenda.
• Embed gender-transformative approaches – recognising women as central to agricultural production, processing, and household nutrition.
• Scale grassroots innovations taking successful local pilots to the national level without losing their community-driven essence.

CoFTI works through Action Labs which are collaborative spaces where ideas are tested, refined, and scaled. These labs focus on areas like food businesses, healthy diets, farmer livelihoods, and food recovery. They bring together stakeholders from every stage of the food system to co-design solutions.

Why This Matters Now

The urgency couldn’t be clearer. India is at a crossroads:

• Malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies remain stubbornly high.
• Climate change is intensifying droughts, floods, and heatwaves, threatening crop yields.
• Diet-related diseases are rising in both rural and urban areas.
• Farmers face volatile markets, mounting debt, and competition from heavily subsidised imports.

Against this backdrop, food system transformation is not just desirable, it’s essential. The choices we make today will determine whether our children inherit resilient landscapes and equitable economies, or fragile systems on the brink of collapse.

CoFTI’s vision, purpose, and ambition are designed to meet this moment – to act not in isolation, but in concert with others who share the belief that a better food future is possible.

Looking Ahead

Transformation is never linear. It requires experimentation – trying, failing, adapting, and trying again. It demands partnerships that go beyond token collaboration and dive into shared responsibility. And it thrives on hope, on the belief that with enough commitment, systemic change is within reach.

CoFTI is not here to impose solutions. We’re here to co-create them. We’re here to make sure that farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers can work from the same table as partners and collaborators.

Our journey has only just begun. And while the path ahead will be challenging, our vision keeps us moving forward: an India where the food on every plate tells a story of fairness, inclusion, and resilience.

Because in the end, transforming food systems is not just about feeding people. It’s about nourishing lives, sustaining the planet, and building the kind of future we can all be proud to pass on.