The article highlights that while systemic climate action often focuses on energy and transportation, the significant environmental impact of food systems, particularly animal agriculture which accounts for a substantial portion of global greenhouse gas emissions, is largely overlooked. India, a major producer of milk, eggs, and meat, faces increasing protein demand due to rising incomes and changing diets, exacerbating its vulnerability to climate change-induced agricultural disruptions. The article proposes smart proteins, including plant-based and cultivated options, as a crucial, yet underfunded, climate intervention, offering drastically reduced emissions, water, and land usage compared to conventional meat production. It argues for greater public and private investment in this sector, leveraging India's agricultural strengths and underutilized crops to build a low-emissions protein economy that supports both food security and environmental sustainability, crucial for India's net-zero goals.

The article highlights that while systemic climate action often focuses on energy and transportation, the significant environmental impact of food systems, particularly animal agriculture which accounts for a substantial portion of global greenhouse gas emissions, is largely overlooked. India, a major producer of milk, eggs, and meat, faces increasing protein demand due to rising incomes and changing diets, exacerbating its vulnerability to climate change-induced agricultural disruptions. The article proposes smart proteins, including plant-based and cultivated options, as a crucial, yet underfunded, climate intervention, offering drastically reduced emissions, water, and land usage compared to conventional meat production. It argues for greater public and private investment in this sector, leveraging India's agricultural strengths and underutilized crops to build a low-emissions protein economy that supports both food security and environmental sustainability, crucial for India's net-zero goals.

The article highlights that while systemic climate action often focuses on energy and transportation, the significant environmental impact of food systems, particularly animal agriculture which accounts for a substantial portion of global greenhouse gas emissions, is largely overlooked. India, a major producer of milk, eggs, and meat, faces increasing protein demand due to rising incomes and changing diets, exacerbating its vulnerability to climate change-induced agricultural disruptions. The article proposes smart proteins, including plant-based and cultivated options, as a crucial, yet underfunded, climate intervention, offering drastically reduced emissions, water, and land usage compared to conventional meat production. It argues for greater public and private investment in this sector, leveraging India's agricultural strengths and underutilized crops to build a low-emissions protein economy that supports both food security and environmental sustainability, crucial for India's net-zero goals.

When we talk about systemic climate action, we think of greener ways to power homes, move through cities, and build industries. We talk much less about how we grow food.

As temperatures rise, water stress intensifies, and extreme weather continues to disrupt harvests, India’s ability to feed its population of 1.4 billion nutritiously and affordably will depend on how resilient its food systems are.

In April, unseasonal storms damaged rabi crops in several parts of Rajasthan and Punjab, demonstrating once again the vulnerability of our food systems to climate change. Yet, we tend to overlook that our food systems are just as significant a contributor to climate change as they are impacted by it. They account for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with nearly 60 per cent linked to animal agriculture. A steady rise in industrialised animal agriculture is rapidly driving methane emissions and accelerating environmental decline, including land degradation, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. In India, which the U.N. Environment Programme named the world’s third-largest methane emitter in 2025, ruminant emissions were responsible for 48 per cent of this output.

On the flip side, domestic demand for protein is projected to grow by 70 per cent by 2050, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, as a result of rising disposable incomes, urbanising cities, and changing diets. National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data shows that nearly 80 per cent of Indian adults currently consume animal-derived foods. While per-capita consumption of meat remains low, the scale of production results in a substantial aggregate impact on the environment. India is already the world’s largest producer of milk, the second-largest producer of eggs, and among the largest producers of meat.

The path to reducing emissions from food production will be highly dependent on diversifying the protein supply. Smart proteins—known globally as alternative proteins—are made from plants, via fermentation, and cultivated from animal cells. Instead of growing crops, feeding and rearing animals, and then inefficiently converting them into meat, alternative protein production uses crops and other inputs directly to create delicious, sustainable, and nutritious foods. Globally, life-cycle assessments show that alternative proteins like plant-based meat generate up to 90 per cent lower emissions, 99 per cent less water, and 97 per cent less land than conventional meat. The World Bank and UNEP identify them as some of the most promising climate interventions for agrifood systems globally, with a mitigation potential of up to 6.1 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2eq) per year.

Despite the overwhelming data, global climate conversations just aren’t catching up. Year after year, climate conferences, including COP30 and COP29, largely ignore protein diversification as a lever for climate action, even as they address food systems emissions. A report by the Boston Consulting Group suggests that alternative proteins can deliver greater emissions reductions per unit of investment than many other climate technologies, including electric vehicles, yet they continue to receive far less financing.

The economic stakes for India are particularly significant: climate inaction could result in losses estimated at $35 trillion by 2070. The inclusion of smart proteins in the national biomanufacturing policy BioE3 and the Karnataka Biotechnology Policy is a positive first step towards tackling food sustainability and security, while opening up new opportunities for the bioeconomy. Greater private and public investment is now needed to unlock the technologies needed to scale smart proteins, as has been done for renewable energy and electric vehicles in the past.

There is immense opportunity to leverage India’s strong agricultural base, large scientific talent pool, and growing biomanufacturing capacity towards a globally competitive smart protein sector. Moreover, indigenous and underutilised crops like pulses, millets, and oilseeds can feed directly into the smart protein value chain, creating stable demand for farmers in turn. Unlike resource-intensive cash crops like rice, they thrive under regional agro-climatic conditions and improve soil health and yields. Agricultural sidestreams can also be utilised as feedstocks for fermentation and cultivated meat technologies, reducing food waste and creating circularity and additional income streams.

On World Environment Day, rethinking the way protein is produced must become a central pillar of climate action. As India advances toward ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047 and a net-zero target by 2070, the right investments can build a low-emissions protein economy that nourishes its people while protecting the planet.

Sneha Singh is managing director, Good Food Institute India (GFI India).

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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