“The food crisis has a silver lining, as it will encourage people to grow more of their own food and may change our attitudes to traditional crops,” said Dr. Mary Taylor, who promotes crop diversity for the regional Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
“We have fewer options for feeding our people as 75 percent of genetic diversity has been lost in the past century. Most people globally now rely on just 12 food crops and 14 animal species,” she said.
“The rising cost of food is placing more value on the need to collect and share our plant materials. For example, an international plant center in Hawaii has varieties of breadfruit trees that produce all year round,” Taylor added.
Traditional food crops, often viewed as inferior to imported processed food, are likely to become more popular.
As traditional crops are often healthier options, their growing use might help to tackle lifestyle diseases such as diabetes.
“No country is self sufficient in crop diversity and access to overseas stocks is vital. For example, in Samoa a taro disease in the 1990s wiped out the entire industry, and taro only recovered when more resistant varieties were imported,” Taylor said.
One way to prepare for future changes was to join the 120 countries that had ratified the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture — this was making it easier for countries to collect and share plant materials under the treaty’s standard material transfer agreements.
