Strategic foresight is systematic means to explore plausible futures.

Imbalanced application of fertilizers is a major fiscal and environmental problem in South Asia.

African consumers have purchased increasing amounts of processed food over the past 50 years.

Rural transformation is an inevitable and fundamental process of development.

Food systems approaches are increasingly used to better understand transitions in diets, sustainable resource use and social inclusion. Moreover, food systems frameworks are also widely used in many recent policy and foresight studies.

Absent vaccines and pharmaceutical interventions, the only tool available to mitigate its demographic effects is some measure of physical distancing, to reduce contagion by breaking social and economic contacts.

Research and science should not only inform food and environmental policy but should be adopted and mainstreamed into actions at all levels.

To guide policymaking, decision makers require a good understanding of the long-term drivers of food security and their interactions.

Literature is scanty on how public agricultural investments can help reducing the impact of future challenges such as climate change and population pressure on national economies.

Governments and development partners looking to accelerate progress in addressing malnutrition have been examining how to use interventions in value-chains to improve diets.

For 15 years, I had lived in a small village in southeastern China. We did not recognize malnutrition when we saw it, because to us it looked normal. We were all malnourished.

The widely recognized role of roots, tubers and bananas (RT&Bs) in achieving food security and providing income opportunities in the world’s poorest regions will be challenged by socioeconomic and climate related drivers.

Growth in demand for livestock-derived foods will likely remain strong in low- and middle- income countries, fueling concerns about expansion of production and the management of natural resources.

Construction of plausible scenarios for alternative futures of global food systems requires an understanding of how the past led to the present, and the past's likely relevance to the future.