Agriculture typically prides itself in technological complexity. In reality, Emile Frison says, the over-simplification of agriculture and food is damaging health and ecosystems around the world.
A billion people don’t have enough to eat, but an estimated two billion, mostly women and children, “suffer from the hidden hunger of missing micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals”, said Dr Frison, the director general of Bioversity International, a research organisation dedicated to preserving agricultural biodiversity.
“Most of the problems are the results of a gross over-simplification of the diet, but it is no good just trying to replace what is missing with pills and supplements.”
Over past decades, agricultural research has focused on providing ever-greater quantities of energy through a few major staple foods. In the process, the diversity of nutrients needed to maintain health has been neglected.
“Unfortunately the cheapest foods in most countries are the subsidised staples, energy rich but nutrient poor,” said Dr Frison, in Australia this week to attend the Biodiversity And World Food Security conference in Canberra.
“We need a new approach to intensifying agriculture.
“It’s clearly not yet the predominant view, but more and more, the signs indicate problems with the simplification of agriculture. Trying to replicate the industrial model of agriculture in developing countries is certainly not working.
“In India, for instance, the Green Revolution is a reality: we're not questioning that.
“But 50 per cent of the children in India are still malnourished. The economics is saying that we have more per-capita food production now than we had 50 years ago, but that hasn't done anything to improve the number of children that are malnourished.”
A decade ago in Kenya, vegetable greens mostly consisted of cabbage.
A concerted effort by non-government organisations to diversify farm produce has now put a variety of different vegetables, including indigenous foods, on market stands in adequate quantities to meet demand.
Early studies show a perceptible improvement in health, as well as in farmer incomes.
“The diverse agriculture needed to supply diverse diets has other benefits too,” Dr Frison said.
“It is more resilient to external shocks such as changes in the weather or outbreaks of pests and diseases.
“Diverse systems also bring farm families a higher income and are less destructive of the wider environment, both factors that are important for general economic development.”
This is not just the case in developing countries: the growth of organic agriculture and nutritional supplements in developed countries indicates a mounting awareness of nutritional deficits among Western consumers.
“For too long researchers and many richer farmers have tended to think of this diversity solely as a source of traits such as drought or disease resistance, that can be used to improve varieties,” he said.
“Diversity can deliver so much more than this.”
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