Beyond fossil fuels: ensuring food and energy security in low-and-middle-income countries amid recurring geopolitical tensions

The increasing dependence of smallholder agriculture on fossil fuels not only constitutes an energy challenge but also a structural threat to domestic food security in world’s low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where a majority of the rural population still relies on small-scale agriculture for food and income, yet rapid urbanization has increased food and energy demand. Recurring geopolitical crises, such as the recent Strait of Hormuz crisis, expose one fundamental vulnerability of the food systems in the LMICs: their dependence on imported fossil fuels. Such a dependence leaves both agricultural production and food security vulnerable to energy supply and price shocks. In this Opinion article, we argue that these crises actually could open the ways to, and accelerate, a strategic transition toward renewable-energy-powered agri-food systems. Renewable energy offers proven pathways to enhance domestic food security. Success, however, requires coordinated actions from governments, NGOs, research institutions, and global development stakeholders guided by a systems view, translated in economic terms by comprehensive benefit–cost frameworks, which account for long-term public benefits (e.g. increased food-system resilience, reduced fossil fuel dependence, and environmental footprints), in addition to short-term private benefits.