December 22, 2022 • 27 mins
From Beijing to Boston, the food on our dinner plates is starting to look more and more alike. It used to be, we ate the local fruits, vegetables and grains native to where we live. Now, with the rise of industrial agriculture and cheap exports, the Western diet is taking over the globe.
Turns out that’s a big problem – and not just for health reasons. As the world grows dependent on an ever-narrower selection of nutrients, we’re at greater risk of a widespread food crisis from an unexpected shortfall of wheat or other key crops.
Bloomberg journalists Jasmine Ng and Jin Wu join this episode from Singapore to talk about how and why the world’s diets converged. And Stefan Schmitz of Crop Trust–which promotes global food diversity–comes on the show to give a preview of what our dinner plates will look like in the future.
Learn more about this story here: https://bloom.bg/3BRQWWN
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
I'm West Caasova. Today, the daily diets of people around
the world are starting to look more and more alike,
and not in a good way. Go to a restaurant
(00:26):
these days and there's a decent chance the menu will
boast how the chef uses only local seasonal ingredients. But
the fact is, in our daily lives, most of us
are eating an ever narrower selection of the thousands of
edible plants the planet has to offer, and many of
them are from big industrial producers like the US, that
(00:47):
grow vast amounts of grain and export it the world over.
Diets in Beijing in Boston were once pretty different. Now
the Western diet, carb heavy, pizza, bread and fat ask
food has spread across the globe. Here's a non scientific
survey we gathered a somewhat arbitrary group of people from
(01:08):
all over the place are leaving Canada, England, India. I
live in Rhonda, I live in France, the US. I'm
from Scotland, but I do live in Turkey. I'm an
Australian living in the United Kingdom. I live in the Netherlands.
I live in Norway, and we asked them, what's your
favorite take out the food you crave? My favorite takeaway
(01:31):
is Indian food, certainly something Southeast Asian pet ti. It's
either usually like a breed or some kind of wrap
which is like a Turkish version of pizza. So bread
of course, my goats, who is usually any Mexican sushi
can already be Pizza McDonald and fiza. I really do
(01:54):
enjoy a good fast food chicken sandwich. My favorite takeaway
is pizza. My your favorite takeaway east tacos. My favorite
takeaway as probably tai So why does it matter if
tacos and pizza are taking over the planet and our
diets include more foods made from grains, fruits, and vegetables
that are shipped in from far away. My colleagues Jasmine
(02:18):
Ung and Gin Wou join me now from Singapore to
explain they're out with a deeply reported story about some
of the unexpected risks posed by this increasing global dependency
on a handful of crops. Jasmine Young and Jin Woo,
thanks so much for being here, Thank you for having us,
(02:38):
Glad to be here with us. In your story, you
write about this enormous global trend which is that diets
around the world are becoming more and more alike. Where
before around the world people would eat differently, would eat
local foods, Now people are eating the same sorts of foods.
(02:59):
Can you describe what's happened? So our story is based
on this idea that you know, it doesn't matter where
you are in the world, our diets are looking more
and more similar. And in the past sixty years or so,
the biggest changes that we have seen are in Asian
Africa towards a more universal diet. And what that looks
like is something that resembles a typical Western diet. You know,
(03:19):
things like hamburgers, sandwiches, steaks, potato, chips, and even cakes.
And while it's true there on a country by country
basis chances that that we have access to a wider
variety of food than our parents are grandparents did, but
as a whole, you know that shift is causing the
whole world to become overly dependent on a handful of
staple crops. And there are mainly rice, weed and mace
and which is you know, the same as corn. And
(03:41):
in fact, today over sixty of the world's daily calorie
intake is made up of just those three staple crops
around the world. You're saying sixty of our calories are
coming from just those three crops. That's right, and we're
seeing those crops become a bigger and bigger part of
meal time. And then those are the placing you know,
native crops like cassava and saga, which were once very
(04:03):
important to local diets, but today some people might not
even have heard about them. We asked the same group
of people you heard earlier professing their love for pizza
and fast food, among other things, how important bread, the
quintessential wheat product is to them. Bread is very important,
is one of our staples, and we buy it every week.
(04:27):
Brand is really important for me. I like it a
lot and I eat it every day. For me, bread
is a sense of for lunch and dinner, very important.
Bred is obviously very important to me as well as
to the country, very important. Growing up, there was a
loaf of Italian bread on the table at dinner every night.
(04:48):
I don't think bread is very important to me. I
feel like it's one of my staples that I could
most easily go without. Bread is a pretty important part
of a Turkish diet. How important is bread to me,
it's very portant. Actually, I really love bread. I think
I mean, I mean, in all my life, for breakfast,
sometimes long sometimes for dinner, I bread every single day.
(05:08):
I guess about two or three slices every day. So
I'd say it's pretty important. Bread is pretty important to me.
It's really important. Bread is really important to me. It's
a part of my daily life. Jin How did our
diets all converge? There are a lot of factors behind
(05:29):
those increasing similarities. Economic growth and rising incomes are definitely
a big reason why we're seeing these massive changes, mainly
in Asia and Africa, you know, with people moving away
from basic staples and adding more meat, dairy and processed foods.
And the other thing is industrial mass production, and it's
(05:51):
also a key driver. It has happened in every industry,
including agriculture and food. There's a lot that goes into
industrializing our food system, from the companies that sell seeds
and fertilize us to farm us, to the producers who
buy the raw ingredients and process them, and eventually to
the consumers. So this simulate efficient system has contributed to
(06:16):
our prosperity. It helps businesses reap economies of scale and
produce really large quantities of food for our massive population
across the globe for a relatively small price. Gen, can
you give some examples of what you're talking about. How
would a diet, say in China or Singapore where you
(06:36):
are right now, in Japan, or in countries in Africa,
how would they have been sixty years ago and what
do they look like now? Yeah, it's great you mentioned
China because China is actually one of the biggest changes
we observed from our analysis, and I think that was
highly related to its booming economy in the past several decades.
(07:00):
So you know, Chinese consumers now have access to more
choices of food, especially with all the restaurants selling foreign cuisines,
and they can afford more expensive ingredients such as you know,
meat and seafood. So take my personal experience as an example. Actually,
I grew up in China and my parents still lived there.
(07:20):
For them, a typical breakfast nowadays often includes bread, milk, eggs,
and sometimes cereal, and almost every day after dinner they
would also have some yogurts. These were not something we
usually ate when I was little back in my childhood,
like twenty plus thirty years ago. A typical breakfast included
(07:43):
above clanji or something we called power fan. You know,
you just put water into a bow, leftover rice, some
soy milk or fine toi and like rice rolls. So
basically a lot of rice. And if we look back
and further to the nineteen sixties and seventies, a typical
(08:04):
Chinese diet MI include a lot of sweet potatoes and
bonds or pancakes made from SGA and flour, millets or maize.
Of course, China is very big, so the diets look
different in various provinces, but in general very little protein
is the disposable income of an honorary Chinese consumer was
(08:26):
much lower back then, and many things were not even
available even if you had money. But if we fast
forward to now, port has become China's most widely eating meat.
It's actually providing about ten percent of our daily calorie intake.
So every weekend morning the cafes across the nation are
also packed with people grabbing French toasts and coffee. And
(08:50):
we hardly eat food made with millets and sgam anymore.
You know, the main things I mentioned in the nineties
sixties diets and too many people sweet potato is something
healthy that actually they eat once in a while just
to gain more fibers. Imagine if you go to a
restaurant with a friend and she orders a plate of
(09:11):
food that represents the Chinese diet, and you get one
that represents the Chinese diet, as they will look very different.
So we've talked about how the industrialization and mass production
of certain foods spreading around the world is contributing to
(09:31):
our diets kind of converging and becoming more alike. You're
writing your story about how imports have become a big
part of this. That countries used to grow a lot
of their own foods and more and more now they're
getting their foods from a smaller number of countries. Yeah,
that's right. So what these dietary changes mean is that
there is now a greater competition for a limited number
(09:54):
of crops. And the war Uklein and the impact it's
had on foot prices and supply around the world, it's
a very clear example why having similar diets as a problem.
Earlier this year we saw, you know, Russia's invasion of
Ukraine cutoff exports from a region that is known as
the bread basket of the world. Because it accounts for
a quarter of global weak trade. And on top of that,
we had bad weather like droughts, flooding, heat waves that
(10:16):
damage production of wheat. From the US to France to
India and just about every major producing region was facing
one threat on another and the result was rampant foot inflation.
You know, food prices were staring everywhere, and for import
dependent countries, the shop was huge. The country's most affected
tend to be those in the global South, and many
of them are lower middle to lower income countries, mainly
(10:38):
in Africa and the Middle East. And you know, Egypt
is the world's top importer of wheat and buys most
of its supply from Russian Ukraine. And after the war,
you know, there were reports of breadlines, concerns that such
countries would be at risk of bread shortages, and there
were fears that this would lead to political unrest similar
to Arab spring. And it's not just that emerging countries
to experienced problems. You know, there are also issues for
(11:01):
rich countries. The war in Ukraine has called exports of
grains and vegetable oils, which push global prices to record highs,
and that added the pressures from the pandemic from high
energy costs and also labor shortages in developed countries. And
in the UK we saw grocery inflation hit the highest
in decades. You know, British shoppers are having to switch
(11:21):
to discount supermarkets and buying more store brand items, and
they're cutting back on non in central spending and buying
you know, monkey vegetables or imperfect produced just to try
to save money. And in the US at the recent Thanksgiving,
price increases for flour and cookies hit a record high
for October, and all of these products that made from wheat,
and there are reports of bread costing as much as
(11:43):
ten dollars to loaf in some places. And it's very
ironic because US is one of the largest wheat exporters
in the world. And you know, this just goes to
show that no country, whether you're a producer or consumer,
developed or developing nation, can be insulated from price spikes
and supply shocks when the world it's all going after
the same few staple crops. My conversation with Jasmine on
(12:05):
and jin Wi continues after the break. Jin can you
tell us what are the countries mainly responsible for exporting
these goods? Around the world, and what are the countries
(12:27):
that are mainly dependent on importing all of these grains
and other global products. So what we find from our
reporting and analyzing data from the United Nations is that majority,
or if not all, all of these major staple crops,
the supplots of exports were controlled by a very small
(12:47):
number of countries. And for many of these major crops,
these kind of exports were controlled by higher incombinations, which
making the most vulnerable countries even more vulnerable. We can
take rice as an example, and rice is actually one
of the few staple crops that's not heavily controlled by
higher income countries because we know like India is actually
(13:11):
a very big producer and exporter of rice, and we
also have Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and then
followed by US. And that's what the rice explore control
looks like. But if you go to crops like wheat,
wheat is a crop that has huge problems over the
(13:32):
years due to the war in Ukraine and one of
the major exporter of wheat was we all know that
Russian and Ukraine's but most of the other major exporters
of wheat, our countries like u US, Canada, France, Australia.
So if we look at the country categorization by income groups,
(13:55):
all of the low income countries are net importers of wheat,
and majority of the lower income countries like lower middle
income countries are also net important of wait except countries
like India and in Ukraine. Gen How has this consolidation
of diets affected health? I mean, the Western diet people
(14:18):
want it, but it's not known as exactly the world's
healthiest diet. It's high end carbs, it's high in fat.
Has that affected the health of people who are now
moving toward a Western diet as opposed to traditional diets?
In actually many countries there is this quite interesting but
(14:40):
also troublesome situation going on. It's like we have under
nutrition and obesity happening at the same time, and these
two issues are actually increasingly connected due to rapid changes
in countries food systems. One big reason why it happened
was our higher reliance on processed or sometimes like ultra
(15:02):
processed food. You know, it's food that's made by industrial
processing and often contains addictives such as flavors, colors. So
a bag of sliced bread is an ultra processed food.
A piece of cake is a pizza, could be a fruit.
Yogurt could be ultra processed food. A scoop of ice
(15:25):
creams that eat often there's also part of that, and
of course instant noodles. I think this increasing popularity of
Western diets like you mentioned, in many cases are could
be fast food. You know, instant food definitely brings a
lot of health concerns to the global populations. You know,
(15:45):
their health reads associated with a global diet that depends
on just a few staple crops. People around the world
are consuming more calories, more protein, more fat as to
rely on a short list of food crops like wheat,
mas and soybean, along with meat and dairy products. So
this westernized diet that souping the world has contributed to
a rising global obesity, which has you know, nearly tripled
(16:07):
since the nineteen seventies, has also led to the spread
of metabolic diseases like diabetes, and in both war and
rich countries. You know, people are just seeking out the
lowest cost glories and that might exclude things that make
up a balanced diet, like you know, fruits and vegetables
because they tend to cost more, and the result is malnutrition,
which is defined by number one, you know, not just
(16:30):
having enough to eat and to not eating enough of
the right things. So eating a light isn't just unhealthy
and boring. It's like owning a portfolio with very few stocks,
and it's very vulnerable to any kind of disaster. One
of the things that you write about is how this
reliance and fewer and fewer crops has led to neglected crops.
(16:52):
What are neglected crops and what is the effect of that.
We have like five thousand fruit crops globally, but we
are actually now only eating a very small array of them.
So there was this idea of neglected crops, sometimes also
being called underutilized crops. They're usually domesticated species used in
(17:14):
previous centuries for food, but in recent times have been
reduced in importance. So many experts actually believe these neglected
crops might provide an answer to our food system problems,
as many of them are more climate resilient and actually
richer in nutrients. I want to bring in Stefan Schmidt's here.
He's executive director of Crop Trust and he spends his
(17:37):
days thinking about what foods people eat and where it
comes from. We'll hear more from him in a minute,
but he has an interesting point to make about what
Jasmine just said. We had more than five hundred apple
varieties in Europe a hundred years ago. When you look
(17:57):
at genetics of apples these days, they derive from just
six varieties we all know, and that is a very
dangerous narrowing of the corridor. We need to build on
the diversity we have. The diversity of food is the
(18:19):
raw material for breeding new varieties. What we see as
the current and potential feature disruptions in trade. We start
to see more and more governments actually thinking about bringing
back these marginalized crops as alternate staples. But in order
(18:39):
for many of these neglected crops to be common stable,
a robust supply chain actually it will be essential. That
might include things such as improving farmers fields and maybe
modernizing how these crops are actually processed. Gin Wu and
Jasmine Ill, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank
you with but the pleasure. Thank you for having us west.
(19:02):
When we come back. What are developing countries doing in
the face of all this, and what does it mean
for the developed world. Stefan Schmidt joins me now he's
the executive director of Crop Trust based in Bond, Germany. Stefan,
(19:26):
thanks so much for being here. Hi. Can you tell
us what Crop Trust does? The Global Crop Diversity Trust,
or crop Trust for short, was established eighteen years ago
to provide support to provide funding for seed banks for
gene banks around the globe. Those gene banks posts the
(19:49):
collections of the most important crops that will secure food
security for mankind in the future. And so this is
really in an enormous vault filled with all varieties of
species to protect them from extinction. Yes, all crops, all
plans that are suitable for consumption for agriculture is collected
(20:15):
in various gene banks around the globe and we provide funding.
We provide support in particular to those gene banks in
the Global South that do not have the capacities to
provide funding themselves. And this plays very well into the
conversation that we're having here today, which is all about
(20:39):
diversity in the food that people eat around the world,
and how what used to be a great variety of
crops has now narrowed to relatively few that people consume. Yes,
absolutely It is amazing what mankind, what farmers around the
(21:01):
world over the last twelve thousand years, created amazing diversity.
There are twenty thousand edible plants on Earth. Six thousands
of them have historically been used as food. Just nine
account for two thirds of food production. These are the
(21:23):
usual suspect. We all know it's weed, its rice, its maze, potato,
and ends on. But we must not forget that there
is an incredible diversity of edible plants, old land races,
also the crop wild relatives that are so important for
(21:47):
food security. When we are facing climate change in particular,
can you describe how this would affect the global supply. Yes,
those the ieties of wheat, for example, we use today
will in many cases no longer be suitable for planting
(22:10):
and harvesting in twenty thirty years from now, when it's warmer,
when plants need to be better adapted, too longer, droughts,
too higher rainfall. So breeders start to look now for
those old varieties and crop wied relatives that are in
(22:32):
nature that holds the genetic traits that are able to
cope better with heat and drought, and they have to
use these old varieties for breeding purposes to bring these
old traits back into the crops for the future. How
(22:54):
are those old versions of these crops being brought back?
Is this something that is being taken from the seed
banks to try growing them? Exactly? That is exactly where
the seed banks, where the gene banks come into play.
(23:16):
They house thousands of old varieties of wheat and maize
and rice, but also those thousands of varieties of lesser
known species like a sorgum or millet a. Scientists and
(23:38):
breeders today know where those old varieties are housed. We
have established a huge information system, so everybody knows around
the world which old varieties are collected in gene banks,
and those science is those breeders can ask for duplicates
(24:05):
of those varieties. They will receive it and then they
use it for their breeding purposes. That is not an
easy job. It sometimes takes years. It's try and error.
You need many growing cycles until you get to that
(24:25):
point where a new variety is ready to be planted
and harvest. When you look down the road, do you
see that we are going to have a different future
that includes many different kinds of grains. I am convinced
(24:46):
that ten twenty years from now, we will have a
complete different landscape of what we see as crops growing
in the fields. There will other crops and there will
be a greater variety. Again, we do not have any
other choice. We have to start today being prepared for
(25:11):
that future and make use of the diversity we have
and create a newer a diversity. So Stefan, give us
a preview when we go into a grocery store, when
we go into a restaurant a decade from now, what
are some of the foods we're going to be eating
that we would not even think of today. Perhaps millet.
(25:34):
Let's take millet compared to wheat. It requires less water input,
can withstand higher temperatures. So in future, I see a
great opportunity for millet to be grown ten twenty thirty
years from now, and I'm sure that it will appear
(25:57):
on the menu of restaurants in many parts of the world.
We have to change our diets anyway, and that is
again where seed banks come into play. There are speed
banks that house hundreds and thousands of different kinds of
fruits and legumes that are ready to be used for
(26:20):
more healthy diets in the future. Today, many people around
the world simply cannot afford food and vegetables, so we
have to put more effort into research into breeding of
new varieties of fruits and vegetables to make it affordable
(26:44):
for people all around the world. Steven Schmidtz, thanks so
much for speaking with me today. You can read more
from Jasmine on and gin wo and Bloomberg dot com.
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take,
the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For
more shows from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
(27:06):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Read today's story and
subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com. Slash
Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you. Email
us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producer
(27:28):
is an associate producer is is our engineer. Original music
by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Casova. We'll be back tomorrow
with another Big Take.
It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
I'm West Caasova. Today, the daily diets of people around
the world are starting to look more and more alike,
and not in a good way. Go to a restaurant
(00:26):
these days and there's a decent chance the menu will
boast how the chef uses only local seasonal ingredients. But
the fact is, in our daily lives, most of us
are eating an ever narrower selection of the thousands of
edible plants the planet has to offer, and many of
them are from big industrial producers like the US, that
(00:47):
grow vast amounts of grain and export it the world over.
Diets in Beijing in Boston were once pretty different. Now
the Western diet, carb heavy, pizza, bread and fat ask
food has spread across the globe. Here's a non scientific
survey we gathered a somewhat arbitrary group of people from
(01:08):
all over the place are leaving Canada, England, India. I
live in Rhonda, I live in France, the US. I'm
from Scotland, but I do live in Turkey. I'm an
Australian living in the United Kingdom. I live in the Netherlands.
I live in Norway, and we asked them, what's your
favorite take out the food you crave? My favorite takeaway
(01:31):
is Indian food, certainly something Southeast Asian pet ti. It's
either usually like a breed or some kind of wrap
which is like a Turkish version of pizza. So bread
of course, my goats, who is usually any Mexican sushi
can already be Pizza McDonald and fiza. I really do
(01:54):
enjoy a good fast food chicken sandwich. My favorite takeaway
is pizza. My your favorite takeaway east tacos. My favorite
takeaway as probably tai So why does it matter if
tacos and pizza are taking over the planet and our
diets include more foods made from grains, fruits, and vegetables
that are shipped in from far away. My colleagues Jasmine
(02:18):
Ung and Gin Wou join me now from Singapore to
explain they're out with a deeply reported story about some
of the unexpected risks posed by this increasing global dependency
on a handful of crops. Jasmine Young and Jin Woo,
thanks so much for being here, Thank you for having us,
(02:38):
Glad to be here with us. In your story, you
write about this enormous global trend which is that diets
around the world are becoming more and more alike. Where
before around the world people would eat differently, would eat
local foods, Now people are eating the same sorts of foods.
(02:59):
Can you describe what's happened? So our story is based
on this idea that you know, it doesn't matter where
you are in the world, our diets are looking more
and more similar. And in the past sixty years or so,
the biggest changes that we have seen are in Asian
Africa towards a more universal diet. And what that looks
like is something that resembles a typical Western diet. You know,
(03:19):
things like hamburgers, sandwiches, steaks, potato, chips, and even cakes.
And while it's true there on a country by country
basis chances that that we have access to a wider
variety of food than our parents are grandparents did, but
as a whole, you know that shift is causing the
whole world to become overly dependent on a handful of
staple crops. And there are mainly rice, weed and mace
and which is you know, the same as corn. And
(03:41):
in fact, today over sixty of the world's daily calorie
intake is made up of just those three staple crops
around the world. You're saying sixty of our calories are
coming from just those three crops. That's right, and we're
seeing those crops become a bigger and bigger part of
meal time. And then those are the placing you know,
native crops like cassava and saga, which were once very
(04:03):
important to local diets, but today some people might not
even have heard about them. We asked the same group
of people you heard earlier professing their love for pizza
and fast food, among other things, how important bread, the
quintessential wheat product is to them. Bread is very important,
is one of our staples, and we buy it every week.
(04:27):
Brand is really important for me. I like it a
lot and I eat it every day. For me, bread
is a sense of for lunch and dinner, very important.
Bred is obviously very important to me as well as
to the country, very important. Growing up, there was a
loaf of Italian bread on the table at dinner every night.
(04:48):
I don't think bread is very important to me. I
feel like it's one of my staples that I could
most easily go without. Bread is a pretty important part
of a Turkish diet. How important is bread to me,
it's very portant. Actually, I really love bread. I think
I mean, I mean, in all my life, for breakfast,
sometimes long sometimes for dinner, I bread every single day.
(05:08):
I guess about two or three slices every day. So
I'd say it's pretty important. Bread is pretty important to me.
It's really important. Bread is really important to me. It's
a part of my daily life. Jin How did our
diets all converge? There are a lot of factors behind
(05:29):
those increasing similarities. Economic growth and rising incomes are definitely
a big reason why we're seeing these massive changes, mainly
in Asia and Africa, you know, with people moving away
from basic staples and adding more meat, dairy and processed foods.
And the other thing is industrial mass production, and it's
(05:51):
also a key driver. It has happened in every industry,
including agriculture and food. There's a lot that goes into
industrializing our food system, from the companies that sell seeds
and fertilize us to farm us, to the producers who
buy the raw ingredients and process them, and eventually to
the consumers. So this simulate efficient system has contributed to
(06:16):
our prosperity. It helps businesses reap economies of scale and
produce really large quantities of food for our massive population
across the globe for a relatively small price. Gen, can
you give some examples of what you're talking about. How
would a diet, say in China or Singapore where you
(06:36):
are right now, in Japan, or in countries in Africa,
how would they have been sixty years ago and what
do they look like now? Yeah, it's great you mentioned
China because China is actually one of the biggest changes
we observed from our analysis, and I think that was
highly related to its booming economy in the past several decades.
(07:00):
So you know, Chinese consumers now have access to more
choices of food, especially with all the restaurants selling foreign cuisines,
and they can afford more expensive ingredients such as you know,
meat and seafood. So take my personal experience as an example. Actually,
I grew up in China and my parents still lived there.
(07:20):
For them, a typical breakfast nowadays often includes bread, milk, eggs,
and sometimes cereal, and almost every day after dinner they
would also have some yogurts. These were not something we
usually ate when I was little back in my childhood,
like twenty plus thirty years ago. A typical breakfast included
(07:43):
above clanji or something we called power fan. You know,
you just put water into a bow, leftover rice, some
soy milk or fine toi and like rice rolls. So
basically a lot of rice. And if we look back
and further to the nineteen sixties and seventies, a typical
(08:04):
Chinese diet MI include a lot of sweet potatoes and
bonds or pancakes made from SGA and flour, millets or maize.
Of course, China is very big, so the diets look
different in various provinces, but in general very little protein
is the disposable income of an honorary Chinese consumer was
(08:26):
much lower back then, and many things were not even
available even if you had money. But if we fast
forward to now, port has become China's most widely eating meat.
It's actually providing about ten percent of our daily calorie intake.
So every weekend morning the cafes across the nation are
also packed with people grabbing French toasts and coffee. And
(08:50):
we hardly eat food made with millets and sgam anymore.
You know, the main things I mentioned in the nineties
sixties diets and too many people sweet potato is something
healthy that actually they eat once in a while just
to gain more fibers. Imagine if you go to a
restaurant with a friend and she orders a plate of
(09:11):
food that represents the Chinese diet, and you get one
that represents the Chinese diet, as they will look very different.
So we've talked about how the industrialization and mass production
of certain foods spreading around the world is contributing to
(09:31):
our diets kind of converging and becoming more alike. You're
writing your story about how imports have become a big
part of this. That countries used to grow a lot
of their own foods and more and more now they're
getting their foods from a smaller number of countries. Yeah,
that's right. So what these dietary changes mean is that
there is now a greater competition for a limited number
(09:54):
of crops. And the war Uklein and the impact it's
had on foot prices and supply around the world, it's
a very clear example why having similar diets as a problem.
Earlier this year we saw, you know, Russia's invasion of
Ukraine cutoff exports from a region that is known as
the bread basket of the world. Because it accounts for
a quarter of global weak trade. And on top of that,
we had bad weather like droughts, flooding, heat waves that
(10:16):
damage production of wheat. From the US to France to
India and just about every major producing region was facing
one threat on another and the result was rampant foot inflation.
You know, food prices were staring everywhere, and for import
dependent countries, the shop was huge. The country's most affected
tend to be those in the global South, and many
of them are lower middle to lower income countries, mainly
(10:38):
in Africa and the Middle East. And you know, Egypt
is the world's top importer of wheat and buys most
of its supply from Russian Ukraine. And after the war,
you know, there were reports of breadlines, concerns that such
countries would be at risk of bread shortages, and there
were fears that this would lead to political unrest similar
to Arab spring. And it's not just that emerging countries
to experienced problems. You know, there are also issues for
(11:01):
rich countries. The war in Ukraine has called exports of
grains and vegetable oils, which push global prices to record highs,
and that added the pressures from the pandemic from high
energy costs and also labor shortages in developed countries. And
in the UK we saw grocery inflation hit the highest
in decades. You know, British shoppers are having to switch
(11:21):
to discount supermarkets and buying more store brand items, and
they're cutting back on non in central spending and buying
you know, monkey vegetables or imperfect produced just to try
to save money. And in the US at the recent Thanksgiving,
price increases for flour and cookies hit a record high
for October, and all of these products that made from wheat,
and there are reports of bread costing as much as
(11:43):
ten dollars to loaf in some places. And it's very
ironic because US is one of the largest wheat exporters
in the world. And you know, this just goes to
show that no country, whether you're a producer or consumer,
developed or developing nation, can be insulated from price spikes
and supply shocks when the world it's all going after
the same few staple crops. My conversation with Jasmine on
(12:05):
and jin Wi continues after the break. Jin can you
tell us what are the countries mainly responsible for exporting
these goods? Around the world, and what are the countries
(12:27):
that are mainly dependent on importing all of these grains
and other global products. So what we find from our
reporting and analyzing data from the United Nations is that majority,
or if not all, all of these major staple crops,
the supplots of exports were controlled by a very small
(12:47):
number of countries. And for many of these major crops,
these kind of exports were controlled by higher incombinations, which
making the most vulnerable countries even more vulnerable. We can
take rice as an example, and rice is actually one
of the few staple crops that's not heavily controlled by
higher income countries because we know like India is actually
(13:11):
a very big producer and exporter of rice, and we
also have Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and then
followed by US. And that's what the rice explore control
looks like. But if you go to crops like wheat,
wheat is a crop that has huge problems over the
(13:32):
years due to the war in Ukraine and one of
the major exporter of wheat was we all know that
Russian and Ukraine's but most of the other major exporters
of wheat, our countries like u US, Canada, France, Australia.
So if we look at the country categorization by income groups,
(13:55):
all of the low income countries are net importers of wheat,
and majority of the lower income countries like lower middle
income countries are also net important of wait except countries
like India and in Ukraine. Gen How has this consolidation
of diets affected health? I mean, the Western diet people
(14:18):
want it, but it's not known as exactly the world's
healthiest diet. It's high end carbs, it's high in fat.
Has that affected the health of people who are now
moving toward a Western diet as opposed to traditional diets?
In actually many countries there is this quite interesting but
(14:40):
also troublesome situation going on. It's like we have under
nutrition and obesity happening at the same time, and these
two issues are actually increasingly connected due to rapid changes
in countries food systems. One big reason why it happened
was our higher reliance on processed or sometimes like ultra
(15:02):
processed food. You know, it's food that's made by industrial
processing and often contains addictives such as flavors, colors. So
a bag of sliced bread is an ultra processed food.
A piece of cake is a pizza, could be a fruit.
Yogurt could be ultra processed food. A scoop of ice
(15:25):
creams that eat often there's also part of that, and
of course instant noodles. I think this increasing popularity of
Western diets like you mentioned, in many cases are could
be fast food. You know, instant food definitely brings a
lot of health concerns to the global populations. You know,
(15:45):
their health reads associated with a global diet that depends
on just a few staple crops. People around the world
are consuming more calories, more protein, more fat as to
rely on a short list of food crops like wheat,
mas and soybean, along with meat and dairy products. So
this westernized diet that souping the world has contributed to
a rising global obesity, which has you know, nearly tripled
(16:07):
since the nineteen seventies, has also led to the spread
of metabolic diseases like diabetes, and in both war and
rich countries. You know, people are just seeking out the
lowest cost glories and that might exclude things that make
up a balanced diet, like you know, fruits and vegetables
because they tend to cost more, and the result is malnutrition,
which is defined by number one, you know, not just
(16:30):
having enough to eat and to not eating enough of
the right things. So eating a light isn't just unhealthy
and boring. It's like owning a portfolio with very few stocks,
and it's very vulnerable to any kind of disaster. One
of the things that you write about is how this
reliance and fewer and fewer crops has led to neglected crops.
(16:52):
What are neglected crops and what is the effect of that.
We have like five thousand fruit crops globally, but we
are actually now only eating a very small array of them.
So there was this idea of neglected crops, sometimes also
being called underutilized crops. They're usually domesticated species used in
(17:14):
previous centuries for food, but in recent times have been
reduced in importance. So many experts actually believe these neglected
crops might provide an answer to our food system problems,
as many of them are more climate resilient and actually
richer in nutrients. I want to bring in Stefan Schmidt's here.
He's executive director of Crop Trust and he spends his
(17:37):
days thinking about what foods people eat and where it
comes from. We'll hear more from him in a minute,
but he has an interesting point to make about what
Jasmine just said. We had more than five hundred apple
varieties in Europe a hundred years ago. When you look
(17:57):
at genetics of apples these days, they derive from just
six varieties we all know, and that is a very
dangerous narrowing of the corridor. We need to build on
the diversity we have. The diversity of food is the
(18:19):
raw material for breeding new varieties. What we see as
the current and potential feature disruptions in trade. We start
to see more and more governments actually thinking about bringing
back these marginalized crops as alternate staples. But in order
(18:39):
for many of these neglected crops to be common stable,
a robust supply chain actually it will be essential. That
might include things such as improving farmers fields and maybe
modernizing how these crops are actually processed. Gin Wu and
Jasmine Ill, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank
you with but the pleasure. Thank you for having us west.
(19:02):
When we come back. What are developing countries doing in
the face of all this, and what does it mean
for the developed world. Stefan Schmidt joins me now he's
the executive director of Crop Trust based in Bond, Germany. Stefan,
(19:26):
thanks so much for being here. Hi. Can you tell
us what Crop Trust does? The Global Crop Diversity Trust,
or crop Trust for short, was established eighteen years ago
to provide support to provide funding for seed banks for
gene banks around the globe. Those gene banks posts the
(19:49):
collections of the most important crops that will secure food
security for mankind in the future. And so this is
really in an enormous vault filled with all varieties of
species to protect them from extinction. Yes, all crops, all
plans that are suitable for consumption for agriculture is collected
(20:15):
in various gene banks around the globe and we provide funding.
We provide support in particular to those gene banks in
the Global South that do not have the capacities to
provide funding themselves. And this plays very well into the
conversation that we're having here today, which is all about
(20:39):
diversity in the food that people eat around the world,
and how what used to be a great variety of
crops has now narrowed to relatively few that people consume. Yes,
absolutely It is amazing what mankind, what farmers around the
(21:01):
world over the last twelve thousand years, created amazing diversity.
There are twenty thousand edible plants on Earth. Six thousands
of them have historically been used as food. Just nine
account for two thirds of food production. These are the
(21:23):
usual suspect. We all know it's weed, its rice, its maze, potato,
and ends on. But we must not forget that there
is an incredible diversity of edible plants, old land races,
also the crop wild relatives that are so important for
(21:47):
food security. When we are facing climate change in particular,
can you describe how this would affect the global supply. Yes,
those the ieties of wheat, for example, we use today
will in many cases no longer be suitable for planting
(22:10):
and harvesting in twenty thirty years from now, when it's warmer,
when plants need to be better adapted, too longer, droughts,
too higher rainfall. So breeders start to look now for
those old varieties and crop wied relatives that are in
(22:32):
nature that holds the genetic traits that are able to
cope better with heat and drought, and they have to
use these old varieties for breeding purposes to bring these
old traits back into the crops for the future. How
(22:54):
are those old versions of these crops being brought back?
Is this something that is being taken from the seed
banks to try growing them? Exactly? That is exactly where
the seed banks, where the gene banks come into play.
(23:16):
They house thousands of old varieties of wheat and maize
and rice, but also those thousands of varieties of lesser
known species like a sorgum or millet a. Scientists and
(23:38):
breeders today know where those old varieties are housed. We
have established a huge information system, so everybody knows around
the world which old varieties are collected in gene banks,
and those science is those breeders can ask for duplicates
(24:05):
of those varieties. They will receive it and then they
use it for their breeding purposes. That is not an
easy job. It sometimes takes years. It's try and error.
You need many growing cycles until you get to that
(24:25):
point where a new variety is ready to be planted
and harvest. When you look down the road, do you
see that we are going to have a different future
that includes many different kinds of grains. I am convinced
(24:46):
that ten twenty years from now, we will have a
complete different landscape of what we see as crops growing
in the fields. There will other crops and there will
be a greater variety. Again, we do not have any
other choice. We have to start today being prepared for
(25:11):
that future and make use of the diversity we have
and create a newer a diversity. So Stefan, give us
a preview when we go into a grocery store, when
we go into a restaurant a decade from now, what
are some of the foods we're going to be eating
that we would not even think of today. Perhaps millet.
(25:34):
Let's take millet compared to wheat. It requires less water input,
can withstand higher temperatures. So in future, I see a
great opportunity for millet to be grown ten twenty thirty
years from now, and I'm sure that it will appear
(25:57):
on the menu of restaurants in many parts of the world.
We have to change our diets anyway, and that is
again where seed banks come into play. There are speed
banks that house hundreds and thousands of different kinds of
fruits and legumes that are ready to be used for
(26:20):
more healthy diets in the future. Today, many people around
the world simply cannot afford food and vegetables, so we
have to put more effort into research into breeding of
new varieties of fruits and vegetables to make it affordable
(26:44):
for people all around the world. Steven Schmidtz, thanks so
much for speaking with me today. You can read more
from Jasmine on and gin wo and Bloomberg dot com.
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take,
the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For
more shows from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
(27:06):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Read today's story and
subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com. Slash
Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you. Email
us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producer
(27:28):
is an associate producer is is our engineer. Original music
by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Casova. We'll be back tomorrow
with another Big Take.
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