Let’s say someone brings you to an open field where there are 7,000 different balls for you to throw/kick around. Of those 7,000, how many would you pick up to play with? If you answered four, you’re right on target for how the global food system operates.
According to researchers at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, despite there being more than 7,000 edible plants in the world, almost half of the calories consumed by individuals come from just four crops: wheat, rice, sugarcane and maize. Not only are these foods nutrient-poor, but their excessive cultivation has caused widespread losses of biodiversity and contributed to climate change.
But researchers have a solution to all three problems—eat more food from trees, specifically tropical ones.
“Planting the right type of trees in the right place can provide nutritious foods to improve diets sustainably while providing other valuable ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration," said Merel Jansen, the study’s lead author from ETH Zurich and the Center of International Forestry Research. "It can also contribute to development issues related to poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation and food security.”
According to the World Health Organization, vitamin A intake is below the recommended level in almost all countries and the prevalence of vitamin C deficiency varies from close to 74% in India, down to 7% in the U.S. Vitamin C deficiency is also common in low‐income populations because of limited access to fresh fruit and vegetables. In their paper published in People and Nature, however, Jansen and colleagues identified 90 healthy foods from trees across seven tropical countries. The tree-sourced foods account for 4x more vitamin C and 9x more vitamin A than most foods consumed currently.
Beyond nutrition, tropical tree-based food production and consumption can play a critical role in environmental and biodiversity initiatives. Tree planting is one of the most effective nature‐based solutions for mitigating climate change. In fact, according to the study, trees contribute to more than 75% of global carbon storage on agricultural land; however, less than half of agricultural land has tree cover that comprises more than 10%.
“Agroforests provide habitat for species that can tolerate certain levels of disturbance, conserve germplasm of useful species, reduce conversion of natural habitat while increasing ecological connectivity, and enhance ecosystem service provision. Other environmental benefits include, in many cases, enrichment and restoration of soil properties,” the authors explain in their paper.
The researchers are well aware of and quick to acknowledge the hardship of altering and even reversing current global trends in agriculture and diets, especially in Western cultures. Jansen and team propose extensive behavior change campaigns to provide more information to consumers about the abundance and diversity of tree-sourced food. The researchers also believe incentives are critical—for both consumers and growers.
Other interventions necessary to transform the global food system, according to the researchers, include: land tenure, investment costs and payback time, genetic resource conservation, technological development and diversification.
"A combination of interventions by states, markets and civil society across the supply chain—from producers to consumers—is necessary to guarantee that increases in demand are supplied from sustainable production systems that are diverse, and that will not lead to large-scale deforestation or other unwanted side effects," concludes Jansen.
Photo: A view of an agroforestry production system in Lampung province, Indonesia in 2017. Credit: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)