WALK into any large supermarket in any Western nation and you can鈥檛 help
feeling that the world has never before seen such an abundance and variety of
foodstuffs. Aisle after aisle of multicoloured vegetables, fruit and groceries
stretch into the distance, served by an endless row of beeping checkouts.
It is a impressive sight, but it鈥檚 misleading. Abundance there certainly is,
for the Western world has never been so overfed. But variety has not increased
as much as we might think.
Strangely, as the world has grown richer, farming more intensive and
agricultural research more sophisticated, we have concentrated food production
on just a few varieties. Ninety-five per cent of the world鈥檚 calories now come
from only 30 crops, and fifty per cent from just four: rice, maize, wheat and
potato.
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According to Stefano Padulosi of the International Plant Genetic Resources
Institute in Italy, we鈥檝e scarcely scratched the surface of the edible in the West
(see p 42).
Padulosi records around 1000 food crops in India and 1100 in
North America. In Africa, Ghana alone has 2500 food plants and there are another
800 in the arid areas of the Sahel. That鈥檚 5400 potential crop species before we
even begin counting South America, Australia or East Asia. So why is the variety
of food we eat so limited when there are so many edible plants available?
One answer must be innate conservatism. Each population tends to pass its
habits down through the generations, and many new foods struggle to be accepted.
The tomato provides a great example. You might think that in Padulosi鈥檚 Italy,
the tomato had been part of the local cuisine for ever. But tomatoes didn鈥檛
reach Europe from the Andes until the early 16th century (the name is a
corruption of the Aztec word tomatl) and the first recipes for tomato
sauce on pasta came 300 years later. In the centuries between, the bright colour
of the tomato plus its close taxonomic relation to mandrake and nightshade gave
it a very mixed press.
In the late 16th century, German authorities warned that tomatoes 鈥渟hould not
be taken internally鈥�. A hundred years later, it was still being listed under
malignant and poisonous plants. And it was yet another century before Linnaeus
proclaimed that tomatoes could be eaten without danger. Even then, people took
some persuading: one Robert Gibbon Johnson ate two tomatoes in public before a
large crowd on the steps of Salem courthouse in 1820 to prove they were not
poisonous. The tomato now ranks number 12 in the list of the world鈥檚 biggest
food crops.
Culinary conservatism aside, the main reason for our limited diets probably
lies in the economics of agribusiness. The more you mechanise, the more
efficient you can become. So it pays to have vast specialised
systems鈥攚hether it is grain elevators or combine harvesters鈥攆or a
few crops. Similarly, research on improving crops can make more rapid progress
with plants that are already well characterised; building up banks of varieties
for plant breeding is horribly time consuming.
Does it matter that more and more of our food is coming from fewer and fewer
species? It might well do, for several reasons. First, we don鈥檛 know that the
crops we now rely on really are the best choices. Most of our food crops weren鈥檛
chosen by research scientists or even by early agronomists. They were the major
crops among thousands discovered by Stone Age farmers. We don鈥檛 really know if
they are the best crops possible, or merely an accident of prehistory now frozen
into our culture.
Second, a more diverse agriculture could be more stable and suit developing
nations better. The vast monocultures of the Corn Belt are fine if you can
afford the fertilisers, herbicides and farm machinery that makes them so
efficient. For everyone else, variety ensures that a single pest won鈥檛 wipe out
your crop and every niche is best exploited. For subsistence farmers, it also
guarantees a more balanced diet.
Then finally, of course, there is taste. The kiwi is the only new fruit to
have become popular in the West over the past century. Until you have been to
the Amazon and eaten ice creams flavoured with a莽ai, bacuri, caju,
cupua莽u, muruci, graviola, and genipapo, for example, you won鈥檛 be aware
of what else tropical fruits might offer.
Research on the established major food crops may provide obvious returns. But
we also need funding for diversity, looking at food plants that are already
known but neglected. Padulosi鈥檚 institute has one such programme and American
researchers are seeking funds for another. Let鈥檚 hope they are successful. Our
farming and taste buds will be better off for it.
