Rare crops needed to tackle world hunger
1st March 2009
Professor Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, in London, argues that the world is currently too reliant on just a handful of key species of edible plants for food.
He warned the combined threat of disease, climate change and lack of diversity in commercial crops has left the dozen staple species that provide the bulk of the global food supply – such as wheat, maize and barley – increasingly vulnerable.
He said farmers and consumers in Britain needed to increase the range of crops they grow and eat, to safeguard food supplies in the future.
That is, if what you eat is plants. We carnivores tend not to worry about a lack of corn or vegetables. Of course, potatoes would be a sad loss.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:12
No one ever stops to consider that there might be a reason why we don’t eat those alternative plants regularly …