Why are Crop Varieties Disappearing?

Many people are talking about extinction nowadays. Stunning wildlife, like tigers, elephants and leopards, is at threat of extinction. Rare plant species and precious habitats are being lost. The list of endangered species is endless. But there’s a much more dramatic extinction going on, that affects us, humans, at our most vulnerable point. It’s our food. It’s what will feed the future. Scientists call it agricultural diversity – the diversity of microorganisms, plant and animal species we rely on for our food. And at the heart of it, there’s the burning question: how are we going to feed ourselves in the future?

Would you believe me if I told you that the majority of the food crops we eat are going extinct? It sounds crazy, but it’s true. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than 90 percent of crop varieties have disappeared from farmers’ fields; half of the breeds of many domestic animals have been lost in the last 100 years. The diversity of our food is disappearing, and no one is talking about it. It’s time to face the facts and to learn what to do against this loss. The solutions are much more delicious than you’d think…

In this article, you will learn why crop varieties have been disappearing worldwide and what to do to stop this loss. Finally, Simran Sethi shares her learnings on how to change the food system through an excerpt from her book “Bread, Wine, Chocolate – The Slow Loss of Foods We Love”.

Facing the Invisible Loss

Farming has changed dramatically in the past decades. And unfortunately, not really for the better. The intensive use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers has poisoned ecosystems and shrunk biodiversity. Enormous monocultures of fewer and fewer different crops have compromised the health of our environment – and of us, humans. Because this reduction in the diversity of crops that are grown has also radically changed our diets.

Today, 95 percent of the world’s calories come from just 30 plants. And just three of them – rice, wheat, maize – provide 60 percent of the world’s energy intake (FAO). We eat more energy-dense food, but at the same time, lack vitamins and micronutrients.

Facing the Challenges

But this narrowing diversity of what we grow and what we eat also has dire consequences on how we will be able to feed the future. Farming is directly exposed to the threats of climate change, pests and diseases. Crops that are resilient enough to face these challenges need to be diverse. That’s the exact opposite of the monotony that we are seeing in the fields around us.

But why does crop diversity matter?

Plant breeders are constantly working on improving crop varieties. They want crops that have a high yield, taste good, or are adapted to their local conditions. Or crops that are ready for the changing climate and are resistant to pests.

However, in recent decades, plant breeding programmes have mainly focused on the first component: increasing yield. Wheat yields went from an average of 1 tonne per hectare in the 19th century to almost 8 tonnes per hectare in Germany today (FAO). The trend is similar for cattle: in a matter of 40 years, the amount of milk given by a cow doubled to 9000 kg of milk per year! And the majority of all cows worldwide belong to just one breed.

Underlying these dramatic changes are the genetics of our crops and animals. Because with this specialization on fewer traits, and varieties of plants and animals in general, comes a narrowing genetic diversity of our plants and animals. Fewer varieties mean less genetic diversity.

The irony here is – plant breeders need genetic diversity in order to be able to breed new varieties at all! But it is often more lucrative to focus on the short-term benefits of a few high-yielding breeds. But these advantages might turn into disadvantages in the future because our environment keeps changing and evolving. That is especially the case with climate change on the rise.

How to Feed the Future

This is why we, the eaters, should be concerned about this, too. Because who knows which traits and varieties we might need in the future? Who knows which pests and diseases will ravage our crops in days to come? And how can we breed crops that are adapted to climate change if the pool of available genes – and their accompanying traits – are fading with every day? We need a wide diversity of genes, traits and varieties in order to feed ourselves in the future.

It’s dangerous to put all eggs in one basket. That’s a lesson we should have learned from the story of the banana, where now only one variety – the Cavendish – dominates 99% of banana exports. Plant breeders are working hard to find a new variety to replace Cavendish because a fungus is ravaging these banana monocultures (read the full story here).

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Ultimately, this loss of variety also means a loss of deliciousness. Because who will know how good some of these forgotten, uncultivated, invisible foods taste, once they become extinct?

Save by Savouring

That’s what award-winning journalist Simran Sethi explores in her stirring but delightful book ‘Bread Wine Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love’:

“Soon after I started researching this book, I saw a bumper sticker that read “Extinct is Forever”. It’s true. It’s what we face every time we shrink agrobiodiversity from thousands of varieties down to a handful. We stop growing it, we stop eating it and, slowly, it disappears.

The loss of genetics is accompanied by the loss of knowledge on how to grow foods and how to prepare and eat them. It’s the cultural erosion that accompanies the genetic one: Our culinary traditions are going extinct, too.

No matter where you live, you have the memory of something you used to eat that is no longer a part of your diet – something your grandmother used to make, something a small shop used to carry. Something you have lost. This extinction is a process; it happens one meal at a time. [edit: for me, that’s the case with the apple varieties my grandfather still cultivates, but that are more and more getting lost, and that you will never find on the supermarket shelves]

Eating as a radical act

Fortunately, a lot of these changes have occurred in the last few decades, which means they can change again. That is, of course, as long as we sustain the diversity found in the wild, on farms and in stored collections that contain the traits we might need now or in the future: immunity to a disease, greater adaptation to a changing climate, the possibility of higher yields or greater nutritional value – and delicious taste.

But in order to support this diversity and facilitate change, we have to start thinking differently about the food in our fields and our plates, and be more discriminating about its sources. “How do we buck the system just a little bit?” Colin Khoury [edit: conservationist and co-author of the most comprehensive study to date on the diversity (and lack thereof) of our food supply] asks. Think of oil. We’re definitely eating more of it: soybean oil, then palm oil – much more than other oils around the world. Although it isn’t immediately obvious that eating olive oil would be radical, in the big picture, that’s exactly what it is. Eating olive oil is now a radical act. Eating anything that’s not rice, wheat, corn, soy or palm oil is radical.”

The revolution starts here, on our plates, by looking at the pillars of our own diets and by making simple changes. The way to take back this power for ourselves is to understand why we eat what we eat. And to understand what we’re losing – so we know what to reclaim.” (2)

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Did you know about this invisible loss of our food? Did you notice some foods you cherish to have disappeared?

In this series, I’ll introduce you to some foods I personally cherish – wine, apples, tomatoes, chocolate, rye – and bring you to their origins. I’ll visit farmers and explore the diversity of these foods. Together, we’ll discover the deliciousness behind agricultural diversity and how to best save it.

Stay tuned to read more from this series!

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Sources:

(1) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). and the World Food Programme (WFP). The State of Food Security in the World 2015: Meeting the 2015 International Hunger Targets: Taking Stock of Uneven Progress (Rome: FAO, 2015), 1. and Marie Ng et al., “Global, Regional and National Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in Children and Adults During 1980-2013: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013,”Lancet 384, no. 9945 (August, 2014): 770

(2) Simran Sethi, “Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love”, 2015, HarperOne, ISBN: 9780061581076

Images from Unsplash.com and Musarama.org