Plant Diversity

Learn why we lost food diversity. The main culprit is industrial agriculture, which has treated food as a commodity for more than a century, emphasizing uniformity, specialization, and mass production. The so-called Green Revolution sped up the loss of food diversity by intensifying crop production with chemicals and the genetic manipulation of crops. Today, our food system is responsible for soaring obesity rates and widespread malnutrition. Critical crop species are under threat of extinction. Specific reasons for the loss of food diversity include:

• Food companies and retailers convinced consumers to accept fewer varieties at the supermarket
• The rise of highly processed food increased demand for corn, wheat, soybeans, and palm oil (see Palm Oil Nexus). Ultra-Processed Planet is a report from the Soil Association about the impact of ultra-processed diets on the environment and climate.
• Globalization has rewarded a standard suite of crops at the expense of local or regional foods.
• The use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has reduced the varieties of crops and increased the amount of chemical use.
• Exotic and invasive species are contributing to the loss of biological diversity worldwide, including food diversity.
• Pesticide and herbicide use, including drift to adjacent crop fields, is extensively used by industrial agriculture to kill life.
• Land conversion for agriculture, especially deforestation, and land degradation, including soil erosion, cause the loss of many species.
• Pollution from commodity agriculture and other industries poisons waterways and soils, damaging natural habitats and healthy farmland.
• The effects of climate change are damaging global food supplies and reducing the ability of local communities to grow their own food.
• Population growth and urban expansion are reducing the amount of land available for food production.
• National food policies advantage “cheap” food and commodity systems over diverse, nutritionally dense varieties.

Learn why it’s important to restore food diversity. Growing and eating a wide variety of foods, including wild-harvested ones, have major benefits for individuals, farmers, communities, cultures, and the planet. Agrobiodiversity—as it is called by researchers—is particularly important to the well-being of Indigenous peoples, traditional cultures, and communities of smallholder farms around the world, many of whom are on the front lines of the climate crisis (see Agroecology Nexus, Tropical Forests Nexus, and Agroforestry Nexus). Benefits include:

• Eating a diverse diet of nutrient-rich foods provides essential proteins, enzymes, minerals, polyphenols, phytonutrients, and antioxidants. Here is an article from the American Heart Association about heart benefits. Here is a study of how plant-rich diets can prevent type 2 diabetes. Here are six reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the environmental, health, and climate benefits of plant-based diets.
• Neglected and underutilized species (NUS) are plants with food value that have been overlooked or ignored by researchers, food companies, and policymakers for decades. Often, they are highly adapted to local environments and utilized by Indigenous and traditional communities. Cultivating them can fight hunger, poverty, and malnutrition around the world. They can restore degraded land (see Restoring Degraded Land Nexus). Future Smart Food is a report on achieving Zero Hunger in Asia using neglected and underutilized species. NUS can help empower women and improve nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Here are three case studies from Mozambique involving vitamin A.
• Edible Plants of the World is a comprehensive database that can help people select plants to eat or grow in their area. It can be organized by nutrition, including iron, zinc, and vitamins A and C.
• For millions of farmers, pastoralists, fishers, and forest users, diverse food crops grown regeneratively provide critical nutrition, food security, and livelihoods. Many traditional plants—called landraces—have been adapted to local conditions for centuries, and their genes help ensure their endurance in times of environmental stress. Here is a story about how an ancient potato could thrive under climate change.
• Seed sovereignty is crucial to plant diversity. The right to collect, preserve, and use the seeds of a crop year to year is embedded in Indigenous and traditional agriculture. This sovereignty is under threat from multinational agribusinesses in their drive to control the world’s crops and enforce uniformity and specialization. Seed banks are being established to safeguard community seeds. Legal protection is being pursued to protect seed sovereignty. Activists are demanding that seeds be publicly owned.
• Diversifying our food is a social justice issue. The damaging effects of our food system fall hardest on communities of color. Diabetes, heart disease, COVID, and cancer are amplified by poverty and a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food.
• Wildlife diversity is connected to food diversity. Here is a study from Costa Rica that concludes that diversified farms provide more stable environments for birds than single-crop farms.

Eat more diverse foods. Consumers have contributed to the loss of food diversity by focusing their food purchases on a narrow range of easy-to-buy and easy-to-cook staples (pushed by large food companies), rejecting crops and foods that are unfamiliar or viewed negatively for social or cultural reasons. There are more than ten thousand varieties of tomatoes, including thousands of heirloom species, but consumers prefer just a few types. Deliberately select more diverse foods, whether at a grocery store, restaurant, or farmers’ market. Examples of foods that were once considered “exotic” that have become popular include quinoa, spelt, lentils, wild rice, and pumpkin, flax, and hemp seeds.

• Heirloom plants are edible fruits and vegetables that were cultivated in the past but are often unavailable today in most stores and markets. Here is a list of seventeen heirloom fruits and vegetables.
• Foodprint is dedicated to raising awareness about the impact your meal has on the environment, including a Real Food Encyclopedia. Here is their guide to eating out, cooking, shopping, growing your own food, and supporting local producers.
• One overlooked group is perennial fruits and vegetables. These are crops that don’t need to be reseeded each year, including herbs, vines, trees, cacti, and woody plants. There are more than six hundred types of cultivated perennial vegetables in the world, representing more than a third of all vegetable species. Here is a list of 55 perennial foods. 

Reduce meat consumption significantly. Meat should be a rarity in our diets, not a staple. Industrial meat production is linked to air and water pollution, deforestation, groundwater depletion, animal suffering, the spread of disease, land degradation, large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and the wasteful use of cropland to grow animal feed. The overconsumption of meat causes chronic illnesses, affecting millions of people and burdening healthcare systems. It is associated with land seizure and violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights. Substantially reducing your annual meat consumption can reduce environmental degradation, improve your health, and help stop climate change. Key points:

• The comprehensive EAT-Lancet Commission report (2019) makes a scientific case for a transformation in global diets, calling for a doubling of plant-based food consumption and a 50 percent reduction in red meat consumption (with exceptions for livestock-based traditional cultures).
• In terms of its effect on climate change, where your food comes from is not as important as what you eat. Animal-based foods have higher carbon footprints than plant-based foods, with beef leading the way.
• The meat industry has employed tactics similar to the oil industry in denying its role in climate change and attacking critics.
• Grass-fed meat is a viable option for reduced meat consumption.
• Veggie burgers have been available for decades. These vegetarian burgers are made from grains, beans, seeds, nuts, onions, peas, tofu, potatoes, mushrooms, and other plants. Ingredients are combined - and then shaped to look like a burger. You can do it at home. Here are recipes from Spruce Eats and Eating Well. Here is an article about taste-testing veggie-burger brands available in grocery stores.

Avoid highly processed and engineered meat substitutes. Cellular meat and ultra-processed, plant-derived substitutes are being pitched as alternatives for consumers who want the experience of eating meat without the environmental costs. However, these products have notable shortcomings:

• Highly-processed plant-based meat is not a whole food. Products such as Impossible Burger use many ingredients, including soybean, which is grown as a commodity crop and linked to a range of environmental troubles, including deforestation in the Amazon basin. The health effects of highly-processed plant-based meat are understudied. Some ingredients have raised concerns among activists. Synthetic additives such as the ‘heme’, which replicate the iron-containing compounds found in blood, are used in Impossible Burger. The long-term effects on human health are unknown.
• Cellular meat (also called cultured, artificial, and lab-grown meat) is created with an intensive and highly technical process utilizing cells harvested from animals. Here is a study on the technical, regulatory, and marketing challenges. Here is an article weighing the pros and cons of cultured meat. This study concludes that the reduction in methane from not using cattle is more than offset over time by the carbon dioxide emitted from cultured meat production. Here is an in-depth article about how technical and economic barriers may prevent cultured meat from becoming affordable. Here is an article about how large agribusinesses are already dominating the cultured meat market. 3D bioprinting of meat has been developed recently by scientists and entrepreneurs. There is no regulatory framework in place to ensure these synthetic products are safe

Learn why animals are a key part of regenerative agriculture. (see Regenerative Agriculture Nexus). The goal is to mimic the “graze-and-go” behavior of native herbivores with domesticated livestock. This supports the biological health of the soil, improves water cycling, reduces erosion, and can increase the amount of carbon that can be stored in rangeland soils (see Animal Integration Nexus). Here is a book about regenerative farming with animals; if vegan or vegetarian, virtually all fruits, nuts, and vegetables are grown in the absence of animal integration.

Grow a garden. Get involved with preserving agrobiodiversity by planting a garden with heirloom crops. There are many resources. Here is an article from Mother Earth News about getting started. Here is a list of heirloom vegetables. Here is an example of an heirloom seed company.

Donate to or join organizations that support food diversity. There are many choices, including seed banks and other community-based initiatives that preserve biodiversity (see Key Players).

Support efforts by Black, Indigenous, brown, and other traditional communities to protect and renew their food cultures and diverse diets. Worldwide, a continuing legacy of poverty, discrimination, and cultural oppression has largely denied BIPOC people access to healthy and diverse food choices. In response, a global food justice movement is working to correct systemic inequities and remove barriers to diverse food.

• There has been a revival of Indigenous foods and traditional cooking methods, led by native farmers, educators, entrepreneurs, and social-media-savvy young chefs, focused on nutritionally dense, regionally appropriate plants, animals, and fish. Here is a study on the revival of Indigenous food systems in the American Northwest. Here is a story about ancient food technologies being revived in Peru. Here is an example from Africa.
• There are many organizations focused on conservating native plants, seeds, and the traditional customs that go with them. One example is Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit organization based in Tucson, Arizona, whose mission is to conserve and promote arid-adapted crop diversity in support of sustainable farming and food security.
• Partnerships with Indigenous groups, governments, institutions, and organizations such as the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance help to reintroduce preserved diverse varieties of crops, creating platforms for the involvement of Indigenous knowledge.
• Tribal economic development programs, such as the First Nations Development Institute, are actively involved in reviving food diversity.
• There are many projects featuring smallholder farmers leading the way in preserving and reviving agrobiodiversity. Here is a story about Potato Park in the Andes Mountains of Peru.
• Food Tank spotlights sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty through food system change. Here is their list of twenty-seven organizations working to conserve seed diversity. Here is their list of seventeen Indigenous agricultural organizations. Here is their list of twenty-four food justice organizations.

Research neglected and underutilized species (NUS). Many NUS plants have not received much attention from scientists. Areas of research include nutritional value, genetic traits, resistance to disease, adaptability, resilience to extreme weather events, potential for agronomic improvement, and suitability for postharvest storage. Other research areas:

• Links between NUS and the cultural heritage and farming practices where they are grown or originate.
• A detailed understanding of the specific agroecological niches where these species grow, including documentation of associated plant species.
• The role these crops can play in restoring degraded land.
• The role their nutritional value might be able to play in alleviating food insecurity and providing livelihoods.
• Their potential medicinal properties or other uses.
• Their role in supporting ecosystem services, which are the essential services that nature provides to humans, such as food, clean water, pollination of crops, pollution removal, carbon sequestration, and recreational, cultural, and spiritual benefits. In particular, more data is needed about microorganisms.
• Landscape-scale assessments and monitoring in order to place these crops within a larger context of ecology, agriculture, and other factors.

Learn how to grow, use, store, and market diverse, nutritious plants. Crop diversity allows farmers to grow plants to fit particular environmental and weather conditions. Selecting species that grow to different heights and have different root systems and nutrient needs, for example, can help farmers be proactive in responding to changing conditions.

• Perennial vegetables can produce a crop when annuals cannot, including edible leaves, and grow in a broader range of conditions, such as desert, aquatic, and shade-dominated environments. More than a third of perennial vegetables are woody species and are well suited to grow on marginal land or depleted soils (see Perennial Crops Nexus).
• Distributors can help by providing linkages between farmers and markets and impacting supply chains for food companies.
• Crop Trust preserves diverse crop varieties while studying their genetic makeup and keeping records about their cultural heritage. Here is a story about a partnership between Crop Trust and the government of Norway to improve crop resilience and food security around the world, building on the success of the Crop Wild Relatives Project.
• Seeds vaults are critical. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway holds over a million samples from around the planet in cold storage. Smaller networks of seed banks are also vital and help preserve local landraces and varieties.
• Seed Savers Exchange fosters connections among individual gardeners who are preserving more than twenty-five thousand heirloom vegetables and other crops in their own gardens.

Use business models that value crop diversity, particularly for smallholder farms, Indigenous peoples, and traditional food cultures. Companies should create products that embrace diverse crops, including neglected and underutilized species. The environmental and climate benefits of food diversity need to be valued economically by corporations. In turn, this would incentivize farmers to grow more diverse crops. The commodity mindset of food companies needs to be replaced by business models that emphasize regeneration, resilience, transparency, and fairness.

• The Clif Bar company is creating products with nutritional diversity that originated in crop diversity on farms. For example, sweet sorghum has deep root systems that build soil. Other crops include yellow peas, sunflowers, and pumpkins for seeds.
• More consumers are demanding transparency in their food choices, including full traceability along supply chains back to food sources. Both can give companies a competitive advantage in the marketplace, particularly if customers develop brand loyalty.
• A Guide to Traceability by the UN details practical approaches to ensure sustainable global supply chains, including the ability to trace the history and distribution of products and confirm that human rights, safety, and environmental standards are being met.

Gather is a documentary about Native Americans reclaiming their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty.

Seeds of Freedom is a three-part documentary that tells the story of seed and its role in regenerative food systems around the world.

The Race to Save Endangered Foods by Vox (5 mins.)

Cultivating Equality in the Food System by Danielle Nierenberg / TEDx Talks (14 mins.)

Soul Fire Farm: Feeding the Soul, Growing Community by Laura Flanders & Friends (9 mins.)

How This Sioux Chef is Bringing Back Indigenous Food by AJ+ (3 mins.)

Decolonizing the Diet | Tending the Wild by PBS SoCal (15 mins.)

Food from the Radical Center: Healing Our Lands & Communities - Dr. Gary Banhan by Project Dragonfly (64 mins.)

Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience by Enrique Salmon / University of Arizona Press

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer / Milkweed Editions

The Nature of Crops: How We Came to Eat the Plants We Do by John Warren / CABI

Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love by Simran Sethi / HarperOne

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman / Chelsea Green Publishing

The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman w/ Beth Dooley / Univ Of Minnesota Press

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Katz / Chelsea Green Publishing

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in the Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva / Penguin Random House

Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing by Luz Calvo / Arsenal Pulp Press

The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices by Eric Toensmeier / Chelsea Green Publishing

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier / Chelsea Green Publishing

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets / Ten Speed Press

Diet for the Small Planet (Fiftieth-anniversary edition) by Francis Moore Lappe / Penguin Random House

Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your FOrk and What You Can Do About It by Anna Lappe / Bloomsbury

How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food,10th Anniversary Edition by Mark Bittman / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables by Deborah Madison / Penguin Random House

Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time by Craig LeHoullier / Storey Publishing, LLC

Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard / Acres U.S.A.

Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat by Nicolette Hahn Niman / Chelsea Green Publishing

Edible Wild Plants for Beginners: The Essential Edible Plants and Recipes to Get Started by Althea Press / Callisto

Ancient Agriculture: Roots and Application of Sustainable Farming by Gabriel De Herrera / Gibbs Smith

Any Book by Gary Nabhan

Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Plant-based Diets by the World Wildlife Fund

Mainstreaming Agrobiodiversity in Sustainable Food Systems: Scientific Foundations for an Agrobiodiversity Index by Bioversity International

The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization

The Toasted Sister Podcast is about Native American food, food sovereignty, people, and culture. 

The Native Seed Pod Podcast explores native foodways, ancestral seeds, and traditional ecological knowledge. 

Food Tank's 2021 Podcast List

Oral Histories of Native Food Revitalization by The Cultural Conservancy