In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas made a concerning discovery: 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed that there was a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century. According to that research, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65mg to 37mg. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron. Nutrient levels in vegetables have continued to drop since that study. More recent research has documented the declining nutrient values in some staple crops are because of the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels; a 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels reduced its protein, iron and zinc content.
The climate change crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. Mono-farming is also a factor, which is where we grow only one type of plant in one area for a long time, reducing the vitamin and mineral balance in the soil. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification, which is a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.
Biofortification encompasses multiple technologies. One involves genetically modifying a crop to increase its nutritional contents, which allows for the rapid introduction of new traits. Another, agronomic biofortification, utilizes nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to concentrate particular minerals in plants. Lastly, selective plant breeding can produce new varieties, though it can take a decade or more to yield a single variety. Biofortification is an alternative to fortification, which has been part of the US industrial food system since the 1920s, when the nation began boosting table salt with iodine to reduce conditions related to mineral deficiency, such as goiter. Biofortification puts nutrients directly into the seed, as opposed to fortification, which adds nutrients into food once it’s grown. On the global stage, international stakeholders such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have deemed the development of nutrient-enhanced biofortified crops as one of their leading goals in achieving food security.
Prateek Uniyal, who is the program lead at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), explained that, “because of climate change, iron and zinc have been dipping by 30-40% in crops worldwide, due to excessive rainfall, cold and physical damage to plants”.
By 2030, the organization estimates, about a billion people will be benefiting from biofortified foods. “We’re about 20 years into a 40-year program,” said Jenny Walton, head of commercialization and scaling at HarvestPlus. “We’re trying to revolutionize staple food systems.”
While malnutrition demonstrates the urgent need to increase the nutrient density of crops globally, Benjamin Cohen, professor of environmental studies at Lafayette College, points to biofortification as a Band-Aid, rather than a solution to the problem. “My concerns are about funders, based on policymakers, choosing to invest in biofortification instead of supporting more enduring smaller models of farming that could be more efficient and resilient than large-scale systems,” said Cohen. “Promoting biofortification suggests solving a problem that should not exist if not for large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture. It’s likely that those same agricultural processes would only be further entrenched with biofortification.”
HarvestPlus sees plant breeding as the most sustainable way of biofortifying; it relies on existing plant genes. The organization works exclusively with staple crops and is developing them to contain higher amounts of vitamin A, iron and zinc, three micronutrients identified by the WHO to be the most deficient in diets globally. That approach means that in places such as Pakistan, where diets are wheat-heavy, fortifying that grain could make population-level change. HarvestPlus has already released 400 varieties of staple crop; none of them are patented yet.
There are other concerns that nutrients are being lost at a broader scale than biofortification can replace. Davis, who led the original University of Texas study demonstrating dwindling nutrient value in crops, said: “A limitation of biofortification is that it focuses on one or possibly two nutrients per plant, whereas nutrient decline tends to affect many nutrients simultaneously.” So far, there’s not yet a consistent supply of biofortified seeds. HarvestPlus also intends for its biofortified seeds to cost less than traditional seeds. But those lowered costs are the result of government subsidies. For example, India has partnered with HarvestPlus to make biofortified food available for children, in a country with a high rate of malnutrition stunting youth’s growth.
The government partnership model may pay off in low-to-middle income nations where malnutrition is common and businesses are working directly with the smaller farms growing biofortified varieties, rather than at industrial scale because the seed supply can’t yet reach that volume. They may have fewer regulations about genetically modified, biofortified crops, such as the controversial golden rice, which was altered to produce beta-carotene and, as a result, vitamin A. While golden rice was bred to help alleviate vitamin A deficiencies, Cohen has written that this strategy adopts “technical fixes to problems that could be addressed in ways less dependent on mono-cropped environments”. Essentially, if we plant diversified crops that have the vitamins a given population lacks, the same nutritional outcome could be achieved. All of the work is about adapting to climate change in some sense. Enhancing fruits, veggies and beans is one approach, but if that’s the only approach from the public policy perspective, it’s kind of idealistic.
Blessings,
KJ Landis
@superiorself on Instagram and X
SuperiorSelf on YouTube
Books available everywhere!
The climate change crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. Mono-farming is also a factor, which is where we grow only one type of plant in one area for a long time, reducing the vitamin and mineral balance in the soil. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification, which is a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.
Biofortification encompasses multiple technologies. One involves genetically modifying a crop to increase its nutritional contents, which allows for the rapid introduction of new traits. Another, agronomic biofortification, utilizes nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to concentrate particular minerals in plants. Lastly, selective plant breeding can produce new varieties, though it can take a decade or more to yield a single variety. Biofortification is an alternative to fortification, which has been part of the US industrial food system since the 1920s, when the nation began boosting table salt with iodine to reduce conditions related to mineral deficiency, such as goiter. Biofortification puts nutrients directly into the seed, as opposed to fortification, which adds nutrients into food once it’s grown. On the global stage, international stakeholders such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have deemed the development of nutrient-enhanced biofortified crops as one of their leading goals in achieving food security.
Prateek Uniyal, who is the program lead at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), explained that, “because of climate change, iron and zinc have been dipping by 30-40% in crops worldwide, due to excessive rainfall, cold and physical damage to plants”.
By 2030, the organization estimates, about a billion people will be benefiting from biofortified foods. “We’re about 20 years into a 40-year program,” said Jenny Walton, head of commercialization and scaling at HarvestPlus. “We’re trying to revolutionize staple food systems.”
While malnutrition demonstrates the urgent need to increase the nutrient density of crops globally, Benjamin Cohen, professor of environmental studies at Lafayette College, points to biofortification as a Band-Aid, rather than a solution to the problem. “My concerns are about funders, based on policymakers, choosing to invest in biofortification instead of supporting more enduring smaller models of farming that could be more efficient and resilient than large-scale systems,” said Cohen. “Promoting biofortification suggests solving a problem that should not exist if not for large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture. It’s likely that those same agricultural processes would only be further entrenched with biofortification.”
HarvestPlus sees plant breeding as the most sustainable way of biofortifying; it relies on existing plant genes. The organization works exclusively with staple crops and is developing them to contain higher amounts of vitamin A, iron and zinc, three micronutrients identified by the WHO to be the most deficient in diets globally. That approach means that in places such as Pakistan, where diets are wheat-heavy, fortifying that grain could make population-level change. HarvestPlus has already released 400 varieties of staple crop; none of them are patented yet.
There are other concerns that nutrients are being lost at a broader scale than biofortification can replace. Davis, who led the original University of Texas study demonstrating dwindling nutrient value in crops, said: “A limitation of biofortification is that it focuses on one or possibly two nutrients per plant, whereas nutrient decline tends to affect many nutrients simultaneously.” So far, there’s not yet a consistent supply of biofortified seeds. HarvestPlus also intends for its biofortified seeds to cost less than traditional seeds. But those lowered costs are the result of government subsidies. For example, India has partnered with HarvestPlus to make biofortified food available for children, in a country with a high rate of malnutrition stunting youth’s growth.
The government partnership model may pay off in low-to-middle income nations where malnutrition is common and businesses are working directly with the smaller farms growing biofortified varieties, rather than at industrial scale because the seed supply can’t yet reach that volume. They may have fewer regulations about genetically modified, biofortified crops, such as the controversial golden rice, which was altered to produce beta-carotene and, as a result, vitamin A. While golden rice was bred to help alleviate vitamin A deficiencies, Cohen has written that this strategy adopts “technical fixes to problems that could be addressed in ways less dependent on mono-cropped environments”. Essentially, if we plant diversified crops that have the vitamins a given population lacks, the same nutritional outcome could be achieved. All of the work is about adapting to climate change in some sense. Enhancing fruits, veggies and beans is one approach, but if that’s the only approach from the public policy perspective, it’s kind of idealistic.
Blessings,
KJ Landis
@superiorself on Instagram and X
SuperiorSelf on YouTube
Books available everywhere!
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