Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

by Preeti Simran Sethi

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 95 percent of the world’s calories now come from 30 species.13 Of 30,000 edible plant species, we cultivate about 150.14 And of the more than 30 birds and mammals we’ve domesticated for food, only 14 animals provide 90 percent of the food we get from livestock.15 The loss is staggering: Three-fourths of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species.16

Wild relatives are essential to maintain because one in five plant species worldwide and one in three native plant species in the United States is endangered by climate change, pests, disease and loss of habitats.

Farmers are often talked about. They are the silent stars of exotic pictures that accompany tasting notes for specialty coffees; they are distilled into the singular portrait of Juan Valdez, the icon of bulk coffee. But rarely are they spoken to.

While roughly one-fourth of food crops are preserved in genebanks, Penn State geographer Karl Zimmerer and his colleagues learned, through their assessment of global census data, that “up to 75 percent of the seeds needed to produce the world’s diverse food crops are held by small farmers” working on plots of less than 7 acres.