Bhutan has unique opportunities to address its challenges and make its food systems contribute in a meaningful and sustainable way to the wealth and happiness of its population.

There are several broad areas in which potential action may be needed to meet Bhutan’s challenges to attain food system sustainability.

1. Improving infrastructure and road connectivity will facilitate access to markets. This is crucial to enhance availability and distribution of locally produced food and to make local products more competitive against imports. Complementary efforts include improving the connectivity of rural areas to other hard infrastructure, such as electricity supply, and soft infrastructure – the Internet.

2. Improving the value chain by encouraging better production and storage practices, quality standards and marketing. This would need to be accompanied by investment in promoting decentralized market infrastructure at the Dzongkhag level, such as cold storage, warehouses, and processing and packaging facilities, to reduce spoilage and losses.

3. Rehabilitation of fallow land – where possible – could help to increase productivity and contribute towards achieving food self-sufficiency goals. In areas where rehabilitation is feasible, this should be carried out in an environmentally friendly way by doing the following: promoting climate-resilient approaches and diversification strategies (e.g. quinoa, egg and poultry production); encouraging peri-urban food production (low food miles); and incentivizing food-system investments through blended finance, soft loans, tax breaks or access to green finance. In the medium to long term, a “fallow land investment plan” should be considered as a key priority in the 12th Five Year Plan and in the upcoming 13th Five Year Plan budget.

4. Encouraging organized aggregation and marketing of crops to achieve some economies of scale and improve competitiveness, particularly in areas where cheaper imports are available.

5. Further promoting high-altitude horticultural products and non-timber forest products with specific uses for expanding sales in high-end markets in Asia and Europe. This would need to be accompanied by other actions, such as developing certification systems to promote the sustainable sourcing of wild-collected products.

6. Promoting sustainable consumption, healthy food and dietary diversity. The Government of Bhutan has already demonstrated that environmental policies can be the backbone of development policy. So, based on that, it can extend this approach to nutrition. This would take strong, creative and uncompromising policies targeting consumers that encourage behavioural changes towards healthy and diversified food diets, products and lifestyles, and raise awareness of food waste. Examples might include food and nutrition awareness campaigns; stronger support for locally sourced alternatives to unhealthy imports; supporting small agribusinesses willing to process local products (for which consumer preference is currently low); or aiming for full coverage of public-sector canteen needs (public administration, schools, universities, hospitals) by local farmers.

7. Leveraging the food system for inclusive development by improving prospects for young people in rural areas. Migration trends show the need to develop economic opportunities in the countryside to avoid rural depopulation and the uncontrolled development of cities. Incentives to improve prospects in the countryside could be provided for local private-sector companies to operate, if not in the most remote areas, at least close to secondary cities. The creation of hubs could gather a range of support services, such as inputs, microcredit and extension, and strengthen market access, possibly through the establishment of food-based logistics companies, storage and processing facilities.

8. Strengthening private-sector participation by creating conditions for local agrifood small and medium enterprises to emerge that will connect small-scale farmers to markets through access to appropriate technology, finance, markets and use of digital tools and innovative technologies. Promoting and encouraging public-private partnership models to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of services provided by State-owned enterprises.