Foods we love may disappear in the future

 Foods we love may disappear in the future

Can you imagine your life without chocolate, coffee, tea or delicious rice? This is not only a hypothesis, but it may turn into a reality due to the 'risks' facing the crops from which humans 'feed'. This prompted experts to seek solutions to this crisis.

Many do not realize that talking about "endangered species" is not limited to polar bears, pandas or elephants, but also plants, including those that people eat. Q Royal Botanic Gardens scientist Aaron Davis lamented that "some things are taken for granted", even though plants such as coffee, cocoa, potatoes, tea, bananas, grains, and many other cultivable species, some of which are essential to the food of billions of people. , suffer the effects of rising temperatures, droughts, heavy rains, new diseases or insect pests.

A study, published last May, warned that the origin of about a third of agricultural production, due to climate warming, may be outside the climatic zones suitable for its cultivation. Rising sea levels threaten rice fields. It leads to an increase in salinity in the delta regions.

The International Center for the Potato predicts a 32 percent decline in crops by 2060. As for coffee and cocoa, several studies have warned of a significant decline in the area of ​​land suitable for their cultivation by 2050, which may reach 50 percent for coffee.

The domestication of plant species was the most important reason for this reality, and humanity may from now on pay a heavy price for resorting to it. For more than ten thousand years, humanity has been using selective farming techniques to adapt plant species for agricultural use in a specific environment, an environment that is changing at a rapid pace today. "Choosing the 'best' leads to the loss of certain genes. We've lost genetic diversity," said Benjamin Killian of Crop Trust International. "So the ability of these crops to re-adapt to climate change or other hardships is limited." Warming requires "using all possible biodiversity to reduce risks and provide different options," explained Marlene Ramirez, an expert with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

ancient seed bank

But the first hurdle is that using ancient genetics, such as resistance to salinity or heat, requires the availability of wild species. Between 2013 and 2018, Crop Trust collected more than 4,600 samples from 371 wild versions of 28 priority crops (such as wheat, rice, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples...). Aaron Davis and colleagues found wild coffee in Sierra Leone better than Robusta and more heat-resistant than arabica. But he said, "If we went there in ten years, it would probably be extinct." "Of the 124 known species of coffee, 60 percent are threatened with extinction," he added, and coffee trees were not alone involved.

For example, 70 wild plants of major crops (such as avocados, corn, squash and potatoes) are threatened with extinction in four Central American countries considered the cradle of much agriculture, according to a recent study.

Therefore, specialists express their concern, that the collection of wild species will not happen too late, as they are themselves threatened with extinction. Nor does collecting them mean that the race against time is over. Wild plants are not necessarily suitable for large-scale cultivation. Therefore, the establishment of new varieties should be reached before the expected decrease in the production of existing varieties poses a threat to global food security. Benjamin Kilian warned that creating a new species "may take ten, 15 or 20 years" and even a hundred years for an apple, stressing that this research uses traditional techniques, without genetically modified organisms.

Will everyone from now on have to get used to dispensing with coffee or chocolate, and will some foodstuffs become the preserve of a few? Some experts have not ruled it out. And if consumers can adapt, the millions of farmers who depend on coffee or cocoa will lose their livelihoods.