Global diets get more similar in threat to food security: study

Alister Doyle Reuters Yahoo News 4 Mar 14;

OSLO (Reuters) - Increasing similarity in diets worldwide is a threat to health and food security with many people forsaking traditional crops such as cassava, sorghum or millet, an international study showed on Monday.

The report, which said it detailed for the first time the convergence in crops towards a universal diet in more than 150 nations since the 1960s, showed rises for foods including wheat, rice, soybeans and sunflower.

Among shifts, Pacific islanders were eating fewer coconuts as a source of fat and many people in Southeast Asia were getting fewer calories from rice, it said.

"More people are consuming more calories, protein and fat, and they rely increasingly on a shortlist of major food crops ... along with meat and dairy products," Colin Khoury, leader of the study at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, said in a statement.

Such diets have been linked to risks of heart disease, cancers and diabetes, the study said. Reliance on a narrower group of food crops also raises vulnerability to pests and diseases that might gain because of climate change.

Overall, diets had become 36 percent more similar in the past 50 years, judged by factors such as shifts in consumption of more than 50 crops for calories and protein, the study said.

The convergence "continues with no indication of slowing", according to the study in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that included the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Soybean, sunflower oil and palm oil had become part of the "standard global food supply" alongside crops such as wheat, rice, maize and potato, the study showed.

WEALTH

Rising wealth in emerging economies meant higher consumption of products such as meat and sugary drinks that are typical of Western diets. "We are seeing a rise in obesity and heart disease ... from Nigeria to China," Khoury told Reuters.

Even so, many national diets had become more varied.

"As the human diet has become less diverse at the global level over the last 50 years, many countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, have actually widened their menu of major staple crops, while changing to more globalized diets," a statement said.

The scientists urged diversification, including of crops that are falling from fashion, such as rye, yams or cassava, to bolster food security. They also called for preservation of genetic variety in all crops.

"Genetic uniformity means more vulnerability to pests and disease," Khoury said. The Irish potato famine in the late 1840s, or southern corn leaf blight in the United States in the early 1970s, showed the risks of relying on a single crop.

John Kearney, of the Dublin Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, said trends in diets could be reversed with greater awareness of health risks.

Some people in Northern Europe were adopting healthier Mediterranean diets with more fruit, vegetables and less meat, he said, even though many in Southern Europe were shifting to more meat and less olive oil.

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

Crop diversity decline 'threatens food security'
Mark Kinver BBC News 3 Mar 14;
Combine-harvester working in a wheat field (image: AP) A growing reliance on crops like wheat help feed a growing population - but at what cost?

Fewer crop species are feeding the world than 50 years ago - raising concerns about the resilience of the global food system, a study has shown.

The authors warned a loss of diversity meant more people were dependent on key crops, leaving them more exposed to harvest failures.

Higher consumption of energy-dense crops could also contribute to a global rise in heart disease and diabetes, they added.

The study appears in the journal PNAS.

"Over the past 50 years, we are seeing that diets around the world are changing and they are becoming more similar - what we call the 'globalised diet'," co-author Colin Khoury, a scientist from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, explained.

"This diet is composed of big, major cops such as wheat, rice, potatoes and sugar.

"It also includes crops that were not important 50 years ago but have become very important now, particularly oil crops like soybean," he told BBC News.

While wheat has long been a staple crop, it is now a key food in more than 97% of countries listed in UN data, the study showed.

And from relative obscurity, soybean had become "significant" in the diets of almost three-quarters of nations.

He added that while these food crops played a major role in tackling global hunger, the decline in crop diversity in the globalised diet limited the ability to supplement the energy-dense part of the diet with nutrient-rich foods.

Amid the crops recording a decline in recent decades were millets, rye, yams, sweet potatoes and cassava.

The study by an international team of scientists also found that the homogenisation of the global diet could be helping accelerate the rise in non-communicable diseases - such as diabetes and heart disease - which are becoming an increasing problem worldwide.

Crop failure fears

Fellow co-author Luigi Guarino, from the Global Crop Diversity Trust, added: "Another danger of a more homogeneous global food basket is that it makes agriculture more vulnerable to major threats like drought, insect pests and diseases, which are likely to become worse in many parts of the world as a result of climate change.

"As the global population rises and the pressure increases on our global food system, so does our dependence on the global crops and production system that feeds us.

"The price of failure of any of these crops will become very high," he warned.

Last month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that called on EU nations to adopt measures to preserve crops' biological and genetic diversity in order for plant breeders to provide adaptable varieties of crops that will be able to cope with projected climatic changes and the need to increase yields.

MEPs said they were concerned that the global plant breeding market was currently "dominated by just a few large multinational undertakings which invest only in a limited number of varieties".

They added that estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggested that "the diversity of cultivated crops declined by 75% during the 20th Century and a third of of today's diversity could disappear by 2050".

Another study published in February warned there was a risk that the severity of some wheat disease epidemics may increase within the coming decades as a result of the impacts of climate change.

In order to improve the resilience of the global food system to future shocks, Mr Khoury said an expansion in the diversity of the globally important crops was needed.

"We also need to ensure the the genetic diversity is available to people," he suggested.

"That diversity comes from old varieties and the wild species that are related to the crops.

"A good example is if you are a breeder of maize (corn) in southern Africa where the crop is the main staple, then the diversity you will want will typically come from where the crop originated, which is Mesoamerica (Mexico to Belize).

"It is important already and will be increasingly important in the future that the people producing varieties suitable for southern Africa actually have access to varieties from Mexico."