The Diversity of Food

There are many alternatives to the top three main crops that provide half of the calories people consume. Wheat, rice, and corn can move over and make room for millet, amaranth, montina, tapioca (manioc), yucca, sorghum, quinoa, buckwheat, arrowroot, and teff. Quinoa is the powerhouse of the group, with an almost-perfectly balanced amino acid composition for humans. It has a high content of calcium, phosphorus, and iron and is low in sodium. Significant vitamins include B6, niacin, riboflavin, and thiamin. Other minerals include copper, magnesium, manganese, potassium, and zinc. Wheat is the only cereal grain that comes close to matching quinoa's protein content. Like soybeans, quinoa is high in lysine, an amino acid often lacking in vegetable products. On a side note, despite its name, buckwheat isn’t a wheat or grain — it’s a fruit from the same plant family that includes rhubarb and sorrel. Millet, montina, tapioca, yucca, sorghum, quinoa, buckwheat, arrowroot, and teff have the distinction of being perennials. Perennials are hardy plants, requiring little more than watering and a new layer of compost yearly. Perennials are good for the soil. Generally speaking, less tillage means less upset of the soil food web that recycles and mobilizes soil nutrients. Because perennial roots and plant crowns remain in place even throughout the winter, they help protect the soil from wind and water erosion. The relatively permanent roots also provide a nearly continuous supply of carbon-rich nutrition to the soil food web in the form of compounds that their roots secrete.

Depending on three main crops to supply half of all the calories consumed is a train wreck waiting to happen. The loss of crop diversity translates into increased susceptibility to devastation brought on by pests and blight. This is because crops that share a common genetic heritage are susceptible to the same types of pests and fungi. With increased plant diversity, and its resulting varied genetic heritage, the pests and fungi that might wipe out one strain of crop will leave another virtually unscathed. Also, crops with a varied genetic heritage provide different amounts and sometimes varying vitamins and minerals. This results in better all around nutrition for the world's population. Farmers can choose which plant strain grows best on what land, reducing the need to fertilize so heavily, and thereby reducing toxic fertilizer runoff into the watershed.

Corporate agribusiness is behind the push to decrease diversity. By selecting crop strains that can withstand being transported, they make a bigger profit because they can ship to locations further and further away with little loss of product. Flavor and nutrition are distant concerns compared to transportability.

Also, in their short-sighted, profit-oriented vision, they can streamline business operations and boost profit by growing the same genetic strain of crop year after year. All that is required is to fertilize more and more heavily each year as the soil becomes more and more depleted. The downside to this is that the danger of the world's food supply being wiped out is increasing as more crops are derived from the same strain, and therefore susceptible to the same pests and blight.

As far as the argument that being able to transport crops further and further away to be sold creates increased choice for the consumer, consider this: what kind of choices are being made available when a shopper in England has the same choice of three or four varieties of apples as the shopper in America?

Stephen Fayon, who directs an international seed bank in Auroville, India, makes several important and poignant points regarding the importance of plant diversity in the following clip........