As Food Prices Rise and Food Security Erodes, the Rules of the Agricultural Game Must Change

When discussing critical infrastructure in Israel, we often think of energy, transportation, cyber, or data. However, in recent years, the system that provides our daily food has become a critical infrastructure for food security and public health. This represents both a massive global business opportunity and a macroeconomic risk that cannot be ignored.

According to FAO data, the global population will approach 10 billion by 2050. To meet demand, agricultural production must grow by approximately 70%. Meanwhile, climate change is already causing declines in key crop yields, even as farmers adopt advanced methods. The message is clear: the food system must expand and become more efficient precisely as the resources it relies on are being depleted.

On the demand side, a quiet but consistent process is occurring. In key markets, primarily the United States, a stable growth trend in the consumption of basic fresh food is evident, aligned with values of health, safety, local production, and availability. More and more consumers associate nutritional quality with food that is close to its natural form, without pesticides and other pollutants. Even in periods of inflation or economic uncertainty, when households are required to cut expenses, the basic food basket tends to be maintained, as consumers insist on keeping fresh and healthy ingredients.

Against this rising demand, contemporary agriculture faces a growing list of challenges: extreme climate conditions damage crops and make output unpredictable; quality soil and water are squeezed between urbanization, industry, and conservation; labor shortages and labor costs burden farmers, exacerbated by the gap between traditional agriculture - decentralized, seasonal, and dependent on worker mobility - and a world where countries strive for economic independence and tighter border controls.

In parallel, regulation and consumers set stricter standards for safety, transparency, and pesticide reduction. To all these are added global transport challenges resulting from geopolitical  conflicts and global pandemics, illustrating how long supply chains can be disconnected overnight. The result is a system that struggles to ensure a stable, accessible, and safe food supply over time.

Here enters a deep conceptual change: the transition from agriculture as a "project" to agriculture as "infrastructure."

In the worlds of energy and data, this transition has already occurred - from scattered and uncontrolled systems to modular, automated, and controlled facilities designed to expand according to the pace of demand and move closer to the point of consumption. A similar trend is beginning to happen in food production. Closed and controlled agriculture seeks to produce stable growing conditions within closed systems, usually near population centers, and reduce the dependence on climate, land areas, and long transport chains.

The first wave of vertical farms may have encountered economic difficulties, but it created an important layer of knowledge. In the new generation, maturity is evident: choosing crops especially suitable for closed growing, modular units that can be replicated, and automation that brings operation closer to the industrial world than to traditional agriculture.

In advanced models, this combination allows for a significant shortening of the return-on-investment time and an aim for high operational profitability, in terms that more closely resemble infrastructure than classic agriculture. Similar to the revolution that the solar and data worlds underwent - from technological promise to economic maturity - it is possible that the food world is also approaching a turning point. If so, the economic and strategic opportunity is significant.

Big capital is already identifying the direction and beginning to treat food security not just as an agricultural commodity, but as a component of national and economic infrastructure requiring long-term planning - from global retail giants seeking supply stability, through food corporations, logistics and energy companies, to investment funds marking the field as a strategic target. Israel, where agriculture, technology, and culinary arts coexist at a high level, has unique potential to be among the leaders of this new infrastructural layer.

Ultimately, nutrition sits at the intersection of food security, public health, climate risk, geopolitical stability, and logistical efficiency. As technologies evolve to allow for the production of fresh greens in closed, controlled, and local systems close to the consumer, agriculture begins to look less like a romantic past and more like one of the key infrastructures of the 21st century. This discussion, it seems, is only at its beginning.

Dr. Tsipi Shoham is the Founder and CEO of GreenOnyx, an Israeli agritech company developing efficient and controlled indoor agricultural infrastructure for food production.