For decades, global food systems have prioritized efficiency and scale over farmers’ livelihoods. This often leaves producers unable to earn a stable income, says Manoj Kumar, Founding CEO of the India-based Naandi Foundation.
“In the food system, the profit is not meant for the farmer,” Kumar says in the Food 2050 film, which premieres January 2026 in partnership with Media RED, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Food Tank. “We need to create a movement around food. By 2050, we will show how farmers always can be profitable.”
Kumar developed Arakunomics, an economic model to produce nutritious crops while regenerating the environment and ensuring farmer profits. The initiative, named a Rockefeller Foundation Top Food System Visionary in 2020, emerged from Naandi Foundation’s work in India’s Araku Valley, where coffee farming is the primary livelihood for many Indigenous and smallholder communities. Despite deep agricultural knowledge and generations of experience, farmers there have struggled to earn a living.
“Our major livelihood is working in coffee fields,” says Tangula Ullash, a coffee farmer in the Boddaputtu village. “Though we work hard and harvest, we can’t make profits on those crops in this area.”
Kumar argues that this challenge reflects a broader failure in how food systems distribute value. “Food comes because somebody is somewhere growing it. If they do not make profits, you won’t get food tomorrow,” he says. “Profit determines the way the ecosystem works. So just by looking at profit as a focus, we can change the entire food system.”
Arakunomics aims to rethink food through what Kumar calls the PQR framework: Profits, Quality, and Regenerative production.
In Araku, guaranteeing that every farmer could make sustainable profits meant addressing one of farmers’ biggest risks: upfront costs. When Naandi began working in the region, many farmers were operating in a barter-style economy and did not track their profits and losses. Kumar’s team introduced a system that paid farmers a cash advance for their crops and then guaranteed a buy-back of their harvest. This ensured farmers had a market before planting.
“In Araku, with every farmer, the cost of production is made nil, zero,” says Kumar. “Once that cost is taken care of, whatever you pay the farmer after that, which is called the price, is actually the profit.”
Quality is the second pillar of the framework, linking nutrition directly to value. “Food should move towards what is more nutritious,” Kumar explains. “If we look at it that way, it will bring out farmers to make more money who create more nutritious food.”
And that shift depends on the third pillar: regeneration. Life below the soil sustains life above the soil, says Kumar. The Naandi Foundation invests heavily in soil restoration, composting, and agroforestry, led by Chief Agriculture Advisor David Hogg, to make regenerative practices viable for farmers.
“[Hogg] taught me early on that food comes from agriculture, not farming,” Kumar says. “Because farming is an economic activity…Agriculture is a culture. It’s a way of life.”
In India’s Eastern Ghats, for example, soils are degraded and many forests have disappeared due to agricultural expansion, mining, logging, and other infrastructure projects. Naandi worked with farmers to rebuild soil health using compost made from crop residue—which would otherwise be burned, a practice that creates air pollution throughout the region—and cow dung. By teaching farmers how to produce their own compost, they reduced dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides while lowering costs. Today, Naandi continues to open more compost centers that collect biomass, add microbes, and return nutrient-dense soil to farms.
And beyond these regenerative farming practices, Naandi has also provided farmers with machinery and other tools to reduce labor burdens. This has made a big difference, Kumar says, to “make farming have less drudgery in it.”
Since filming Food 2050, Arakunomics has demonstrated that guaranteeing farmer profits can lead to healthier soils, stronger livelihoods, and more resilient supply chains. So far, Araku Coffee shops have opened throughout both India and Paris, France. But for Kumar, the work is far from over.
“This can become a worldwide phenomenon,” says Kumar. “Every food that you eat, can you ensure that the farmer who produced it made profit? Can you ensure that it’s good for you? And can you ensure that it’s not at the cost of the planet?”
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