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Food production output needed to avert crisis
Food prices have soared to record heights and are projected to increase further in the coming decade, pushing millions of people into hunger and fueling political unrest around the world, Worldwatch Institute’s recently released report, State of the World 2011stated.
Innovations that nourish the planet shows that diversifying food production to include local and indigenous vegetables can help communities boost their self-sufficiency and protect vulnerable populations from price shocks.
“The solutions to the price crisis won’t necessarily come from producing more food, but from listening to farmers, investing in indigenous vegetables, and changing how foods are processed and marketed,” said Danielle Nierenberg, co-director of Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project
The project’s on-the ground research unearthed hundreds of environmentally sustainable solutions for reducing hunger and poverty. “The project aims to create a roadmap for the funding and donor community to ensure that agricultural funding is directed to projects that really work,” said Brian Halweil, Nourishing the Planet co-director.
Mainstream agricultural approaches have tended to focus on a handful of staple crops, such as rice, wheat, and maize, and to promote the use of expensive, high-tech inputs, creating an unsustainable and vulnerable food system. 
Last year’s drought in Russia that damaged a third of the country’s wheat harvest, together with widespread flooding in Pakistan and Australia, caused price shocks around the world. Skyrocketing food prices are especially destabilizing in poor, import-dependent countries such as those in Africa, where households spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. In Egypt, the world’s leading wheat importer, a 70 percent rise in wheat prices helped trigger the recent wave of protests that swept the country. Subsequent unrest across the region is raising fears about global instability. Investing in agricultural development, especially indigenous vegetable crops, could help feed communities in Africa and worldwide, boosting their resilience to price shocks while helping farmers protect biodiversity and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
“There is no other single sector of the global economy that is so central to meeting the needs of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet, while also protecting the health of the environment,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.
Food security is not only about the quantity of food we eat, but also about the quality and diversity of food sources. In contrast to the staple grains that receive disproportionate attention from development aid, vegetables can offer a sustainable solution for a diverse and balanced diet. Growing vegetables can help address the “hidden hunger” of micronutrient deficiencies that affects some 1 billion people worldwide, and also brings multiple benefits for farmers. “Vegetables have shorter cycles, are faster-growing than cereal crops, and require little space,” says Abdou Tenkouano, director of AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center’s Regional
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