To achieve a food-secure world, we must establish sustainable productivity growth as a unifying, overarching objective that drives policies influencing the food system. And if sustainable productivity is our North Star, innovation is the path to get there.
Productivity growth is about doing more with less. Innovation is about doing it better.
Productivity can bring connotations of ruthless industrial efficiency, indifferent to the fallout for people and the planet. And for every person who believes that innovation will be our saving grace, there is another who believes it is a euphemism for products that corporations develop for the purpose of entrenching new dependencies for private gain.