April 16th, 2022 - Crop Diversity and Avocado Toast

What does Avocado Toast have to do with soil health or climate change? Today, I came across an article titled “Our food system isn't ready for the climate crisis” that got me on a chase to understand food and crop diversity and its impact on climate change, soil health, and overall food security. I am always at the “beginner” skill level in this subject, but it is interesting to know how interconnected we are with nature. I will get to the avocado toast later. 

As a consumer in the US, I am aware of the industrialized nature of the food system. It is not a bad thing but is it sustainable? Climate change and warming temperatures make the earth less suitable for the crops that provide most of our calories. Nature has a simple way to adapt to different climates: genetic diversity.

It’s not about going back, it’s about looking back with a bit of humility at the diversity and food systems that kept humans alive for thousands of years in greater harmony with nature - and looking at what can be applied in the 21st century food system

Humans have eaten more than 6000 plant species over time. The world now mostly eats just nine, of which just three – rice, wheat, and maize – provide 50% of all calories. Add potato, barley, palm oil, soy, and sugar (beet and cane), and you have 75% of all the calories that fuel our species.

   

Growing up in South India, you generally take the varieties of bananas for granted. I have fond memories of Poovan, Rasthalli, Karpuravalli (my favorite), and others. Today I learned that we mostly eat the Cavendish variety. Commercial banana farming made Gros Michel the favored variety in the 1900s. It got wiped out due to a fungus called Panama 1, and instead of learning from nature and opting for diversity, we switched en masse to a similar variety, the Cavendish. Now a new fungus, Panama 4, is threatening the Cavendish variety. 

This story is true for bananas, asparagus, vanilla, oysters, and many other foods. We have more choices, but the loss in diversity poses a significant problem for crop resilience and food security.

Avocados were first eaten in Mexico at least 9,000 years ago, and over time hundreds of varieties grew across Latin America in different conditions. Today, avocados are a salad and dip staple, and we can find them in virtually every grocery store – but only one kind: the Hass. We love our Avocado toast and the occasional guacamole dip, but I never thought deeply about the crop diversity issue until today. Maybe the technology that helps with post-harvest preservation, like Apeel that we talked about yesterday, can help bring back avocados' diversity. That hope will make me less guilty the next time I buy this in the store. 

Over the last 2 weeks, we have talked about regenerative agriculture, fungi, soil prebiotics, and biological fertilizers concerning soil health. Crop diversity also plays a role. Work at the University of California Berkely has shown that crop diversity enhances soil fungi in depleted soil. “Monoculture has continuously depleted not only fungal communities but another important soil biodiversity. Over decades of intensive monoculture agriculture in the Central Valley, much of the soil in California and the country has significantly depleted arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) communities. They have demonstrated that crop diversity via polyculture practices enriches AMF communities, counteracting the adverse effects of agricultural intensification on AMF, providing the potential to increase agroecosystem functioning and sustainability.

Not all is lost. Agroecologists and regenerative farmers argue that the most efficient and sustainable food systems use techniques that mimic nature rather than try to dominate it with artificial ones. So maybe this is Green Revolution 2.0. This issue also has triggered an organized global effort to find and conserve diversity in gene or seed banks. The topic of seed banks could be a topic for another post.

What can we do? I found an engaging resource called Ark of Taste and Slow Food as I was learning today. Ark of Taste is an online catalog of traditional foods that risk extinction in the modern world. Bite-Size Slow Food has a few ideas that we have been discussing already. 

Let me know your thoughts and ideas? Maybe your favorite banana variety!