Prompt action to promote "sustainable diets and food biodiversity" so as to improve the health of humans and of the planet is urged in a book just published by FAO and Bioversity International. Progressive farmers, be afraid.
Irrespective of the many successes of agriculture in the last three decades, Barbara Burlingame, Principal Officer of FAOs Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division, says food systems are not working. Never mind that the proportion of the world's population that is hungry is actually lower now; never mind that food is produced more efficiently now; and never mind that most of the problems with hunger can be sheeted back to a political (distribution) factor.
Anyway, blame modern agriculture if that's the fashion.
The book, Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity, makes the claim that while over 900 million people in the world suffer from hunger, about 1. 5 billion are overweight or obese, and an estimated two billion suffer from micronutrient malnutrition including vitamin A, iron, or iodine deficiency.
The problem of feeding the world's growing population has so far been seen largely in terms of providing sufficient quantities of food, the book points out. "But the pace of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, coupled with emerging health issues related to diet, make it urgent to address the quality of agriculture and food systems."
"Poor diets are linked to marked increases in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases across the world." Yeah, thanks for that.
One omission of the book seems to be not placing any weight on the contribution poor personal choices make to the obesity problem; would different farming systems really make any difference in this regard? Very unlikely.
Image: Not from the book mentioned above.
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