India, Oct. 6 -- A farmer in Nashik helplessly watches his onion harvest rot in the open after the rains collapse the roof of the local storage. A group of farmers in Bihar throws tonnes of tomatoes on the road as the prices plummeted far below their expectations.

Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, a mother returns home empty-handed from the ration shop because the supplies ran out before her turn. All this while, in the national capital, caterers at lavish weddings scrape trays of untouched food and throw them into garbage bags. These are not disconnected images. Nor are they figments of imagination.

They are pieces of the same story that captures the paradox of our food system, which faces both surplus and scarcity, bounty and hunger, waste and...