Nature has a simple way of adapting to different climates: genetic diversity. While some plants react badly to higher temperatures or less rainfall, other varieties can not only survive but thrive, giving humans more choice in what they can grow and eat. However the powerful food industry had other ideas and, over the last century, humans have increasingly resorted to a smaller and smaller number of crop varieties that can be mass-produced and shipped around the world. “The line between abundance and catastrophe is getting thinner and thinner, and the public is unaware and unconcerned,” writes Dan Saladino in his book Eating to Extinction.
The Guardian devotes a series of articles to the crisis of diversity in our diet. Here’s the first:
