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The Salt

A Map Of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You June 13, 2016 · 2:25 PM ET

JEREMY CHERFAS

A new study reveals the full extent of globalization in the world's food supply. The researchers put together a series of interactives that visualize the results. Here's a screen grab, which shows crops that originate in South Asia. Click here to see more interactive maps. Screenshot from CIAT

Some people may be dimly aware that Thailand's

chilies and Italy's tomatoes — despite being central

to their respective local cuisines — originated in

South America. Now, for the first time, a new study

reveals the full extent of globalization in our food

supply. More than two-thirds of the crops that

underpin national diets originally came from

somewhere else — often far away. And that trend

has accelerated over the past 50 years.

Colin Khoury, a plant scientist at the International

Center for Tropical Agriculture (known by its Spanish acronym CIAT) and the U.S.

Department of Agriculture, is the study's lead researcher. Khoury tells The Salt that

"the numbers affirm what we have long known — that our entire food system is

completely global."

Previous work by the same authors had shown that national diets have adopted new

crops and become more and more globally alike in recent decades. The new study

shows that those crops are mainly foreign.

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The idea that crop plants have centers of origin, where they were originally

domesticated, goes back to the 1920s and the great Russian plant explorer Nikolai

Vavilov. He reasoned that the region where a crop had been domesticated would be

marked by the greatest diversity of that crop, because farmers there would have been

selecting different types for the longest time. Diversity, along with the presence of that

crop's wild relatives, marked the center of origin.

The Fertile Crescent, with its profusion of wild grasses related to wheat and barley, is

the primary center of diversity for those cereals. Thai chilies come originally from

Central America and tropical South America, while Italian tomatoes come from the

Andes.

Khoury and his colleagues extended Vavilov's methods to look for the origins of 151

different crops across 23 geographical regions. They then examined national statistics

for diet and food production in 177 countries, covering 98.5 percent of the world's

population.

"For each country, we could work out which crops contributed to calories, protein, fats

and total weight of food — and whether they originated in that country's region or

were foreign," Khoury says.

T H E S A LT

In The New Globalized Diet, Wheat, Soy And Palm Oil Rule

7/9/2020 A Map Of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You : The Salt : NPR

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The great Russian plant explorer Nikolai Vavilov reasoned that crops originated in the region of the world where they, and their wild relatives, show up in greatest diversity. This map plots the center of origin and primary region of diversity for 151 different crops. (Some crops, like wheat, have more than one primary region of diversity.) The Royal Society

Separately, the researchers looked at what farmers

were growing in each country and whether those

crops were foreign in origin.

Globally, foreign crops made up 69 percent of

country food supplies and farm production.

"Now we know just how much national diets and

agricultural systems everywhere depend on crops

that originated in other parts of the world," Khoury

says.

In the United States, diet depends on crops from

the Mediterranean and West Asia, like wheat,

barley, chickpea, almonds and others. Meanwhile,

the U.S. farm economy is centered on soybeans from East Asia and maize from Mexico

and Central America, as well as wheat and other crops from the Mediterranean. The

U.S. is itself the origin of sunflowers, which countries from Argentina to China grow

and consume.

Paul Gepts, a plant breeder and professor at the University of California, Davis, who

was not involved in the study, called the findings very important.

"Professionals are aware of global interdependence, but this is not something most

people have thought about," he says.

CIAT researchers have produced an interactive graphic that allows you to explore the

results — Gepts says this could really help people understand where their food comes

from. "It shows up on the screen very nicely," he says.

7/9/2020 A Map Of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You : The Salt : NPR

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This screenshot of an interactive graphic shows that, on average, crops that originated in tropical South America contribute 821.6 calories per person per day to West African diets. See more interactive maps. Screenshot from CIAT

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Regions far from centers of agricultural biodiversity — such as North America,

northern Europe and Australia — are most dependent on foreign crops. By the same

token, countries in regions of diversity that are still growing and eating their

traditional staples — for example, South Asia and West Africa — were least dependent

on foreign crops. But even countries like Bangladesh and Niger depend on foreign

crops for one-fifth of the food they eat and grow. Tomatoes, chilies and onions (from

West and Central Asia), for example, are important in both countries.

Furthermore, over the past 50 years, the world's dietary dependence on foreign crops

has increased from around 63 percent to the current 69 percent. Khoury says this was

"a bit of a surprise."

"Cultures adopt foreign crops very quickly after coming into contact with them," he

says, pointing out that potatoes were being grown in Europe just 16 years after being

discovered in the Andes. "We've been connected globally for ages, and yet there's still

change going on."

Crops grown for fats and oils have seen the greatest change: Brazil now grows

soybeans from East Asia, and Malaysia and Indonesia grow oil palm from West Africa.

Global interdependence also extends to the future of crops — for example, to combat

the threats of climate change and new pests and diseases. The genes needed to face

those challenges are most likely to be found in the primary regions of diversity, but

will be needed wherever those crops are grown.

That is a crucial point for Cary Fowler, former executive secretary of the Global Crop

Diversity Trust and an author of the paper. He says the study presents scientifically

rigorous evidence for interdependence within the global food system.

"That means we need to start behaving as if we are interdependent," Fowler said in an

interview.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is

supposed to ensure that countries can get hold of the plant diversity they need to

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develop new varieties so they can withstand future challenges. But most countries,

Fowler says, are not providing the "facilitated access" promised by the treaty.

The problem is usually political, as countries ignore the shared access offered by the

seed treaty (which about 120 countries have adopted) in an effort to keep any potential

benefits to themselves.

For example, during the International Year of Quinoa in 2013, researchers attempted

to compare as many different varieties of the Andean grain as they could, to see which

might be best in different environments. Of more than 3,000 different known

varieties, the researchers could obtain only 21, and none of those came directly from

gene banks in the countries of origin.

Other researchers who conducted a deliberate test of the treaty genteelly concluded

that, "after nearly 10 years, 'facilitated access' is not straightforward."

Fowler says that this kind of attitude undermines the good intentions expressed in the

treaty: "It's time for the International Treaty to be observed and enforced."

Jeremy Cherfas is a biologist and science journalist based in Rome.

globalization crop diversity