Breeding better food

Soaring food prices have put the spotlight back on food and agriculture. But for every supermarket shopper in Munich or Mumbai, there are millions more who are finding it impossible to put food on the table to feed their families. Meet the world’s poor, more than one billion people, living on little more than a dollar a day. More than three-quarters of them live in the rural hinterlands, far away from the scrutiny of cameras, where hunger and poverty can go together like a nail in a coffin.

Most of the poor in developing countries rely on one of a few staple cereals – such as wheat, rice, or maize – for sustenance. All three crops were the focus of the Green Revolution, which emphasised yields and did much to stave off famine and hunger. But, while many of the poor may now have their daily bread, they are still stalked by an insidious “hidden hunger” that threatens their health and productivity.  This hunger can leave children blind, lower their IQ several notches, and provide little defense against an onslaught of illnesses that can linger on through adulthood and lead to a premature death. It prevents millions of people too sick or unhealthy to work from climbing out of poverty and fritters away the already paltry GDP of the poorest countries. This hidden hunger, also known as micronutrient malnutrition, is caused by a lack of sufficient micronutrients, such as vitamin A, zinc, or iron, in the diet. A diet that includes fruits, vegetables and animal products provides enough micronutrients for good health, but is simply out of reach for most of the world’s poor. Rising food prices will make things worse, pushing millions more into poverty and unable to procure more nutritious foods, thereby increasing micronutrient malnutrition.

The global economic costs of micronutrient malnutrition are so enormous that a distinguished panel of economists, including no less than five Nobel laureates, ranked micronutrient supplements (for example, vitamin A pills) as number one in a list of the “most promising solutions to ten of the most pressing challenges facing the world today.” Food fortification (such as adding iodine to salt) took third place on that same list which was put out by the Copenhagen Consensus. While supplementation and fortification have been the mainstay of strategies to reduce micronutrient malnutrition, the political will, and thus funding, to eliminate hidden hunger through these means has been insufficient. Furthermore, as strategies that work best in urban areas, they are not  as effective in reaching  the rural poor – how do you get processed fortified foods on a regular basis to an African farmer and her children who live a two day’s walk from the nearest paved road, or market?

However, an emerging new technology, number five on the list by the Consensus, promises to alleviate micronutrient malnutrition more cost-effectively than existing methods, especially among the rural poor. It’s called biofortification and it relies on an unprecedented union between agriculture and health disciplines to breed staple food crops that are naturally “biofortified” with micronutrients. This breeding can be accomplished by drawing on the wealth of global seed banks that store many seed varieties already naturally high in desirable nutrients. Those same crops that put food on the table through the Green Revolution can now be made more nutritious, providing higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, and iron to malnourished people throughout the developing world.

HarvestPlus, a global non-profit organisation, has spearheaded the effort to breed and disseminate biofortified staple foods, an effort that now involves hundreds of scientists at more than one hundred institutions around the world. Already, HarvestPlus and its partners, such as the International Potato Centre, have launched biofortified sweet potato high in vitamin A in Africa, where more than tens of thousands of children go blind every year from lack of vitamin A. High iron beans developed at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture are slated for field tests in Rwanda within the year, with spillover benefits to other African countries. Other biofortified crops such as high-iron rice and high-vitamin A maize and cassava are also in the pipeline.  

Promising results
HarvestPlus rigorously tests its biofortified crops, and foods prepared from them, to ensure that they contain enough micronutrients to improve nutrition. Initial research has been promising. In Mozambique, for example, where the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency among children of ages six months to five years is estimated at more than 70 percent, researchers found that eating sweet potato biofortified with vitamin A significantly increased vitamin A levels in young children, an age group most vulnerable to vitamin A deficiency.

As part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, HarvestPlus has access to national partners in poor countries that are instrumental in getting biofortified crop seed out to farmers and encouraging people to buy and eat biofortified foods. The seeds are made available to farmers at no charge, who will then be able to save seed from their own biofortified crops, and replant them, year after year. HarvestPlus ensures that these seeds are as productive and desirable as other popular, but less nutritious, varieties grown by farmers. Biofortified crops, once disseminated in a country, can also be adapted to other regions, at minimal additional cost.

Enormous potential
Biofortification is a long-term strategy that will help reduce overall micronutrient deficiencies in a population. Its enormous potential in reaching malnourished people so cost-effectively is what caught the attention of the Copenhagen Consensus. For seventy-five million dollars you could provide iron to about thirty percent of South Asia’s population – through fortification – for one year. Or, for the same amount of money, you could develop, and distribute, iron-biofortified wheat and rice varieties that could help alleviate iron deficiency in many more people, year after year.

HarvestPlus envisions that within fifteen years, up to half a billion people suffering from micronutrient malnutrition in developing countries will be eating biofortified crops and foods. The solution to hunger, and ultimately to fuelling the escape from poverty, is an ample, nutritious, diet that allows all people to live healthy, productive, lives. Through biofortification, we can begin by putting the power to grow more nutritious food back in the hands of those who need it most – the rural and malnourished poor.