Why We Need to Grow More Indigenous Foods

The industrialization of food harshly impacts developing countries — but growing more indigenous foods might offer a solution.
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This video was created in partnership with Eat Forum, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the IKEA Foundation.

Our global farming system has failed to feed the world’s population but growing more diverse foods might be a way to fix this. Despite producing enough food in a year to feed the plant, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found that an estimated 2.4 billion people faced moderate to severe food insecurities in 2020. Laura Pereira is a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stellenbosch University, and Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the industrialization of the food system and how it affects developing countries.

Between 1960 and 2000, yields for those primary crops rose dramatically in developing countries: 208% for wheat, 109% for rice, 157% for maize, 78% for potatoes, and 36% for cassava. Although the green revolution’s goal was to create more food for the planet, subsidies incentivized the production of single crops and we ended up with too much of those foods. Alternative uses for these crops had to be explored. In the US, for example, corn has been so heavily subsidized that farmers grew too much for the population to eat so now it’s used in things like bio fuel, animal feed, fructose syrup, and adhesives.

Another effect of this boost in production, Pereira says, is a reduction in the production of less profitable crops that could provide a more balanced diet. While communities are increasingly focused on growing cash crops for their economic benefits they are also moving further away from growing food to meet their own nutritional needs. Pereira says that one solution to this problem is to grow more food that is indigenous to the land, rather than applying technology to grow foreign crops. This would decrease monoculture, help reduce the need to buy cheap unhealthy food, and provide a larger variety of foods to get nutrients from.

#Food #FoodSecurity #Climate #Earth #Environment #Science #NowThis

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