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According to a new study by Canada, the world's agricultural producers are not growing enough fruits and vegetables to feed the world's population with a healthy diet.
The study, published this week in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, indicates that farming practices do not follow common sense food, producing a significant overproduction of grains, sugars and fats while growing three times less products than nutritionists suggest.
The study, led by researchers from the University of Guelph and completed by a team of more than a dozen scientists from Canada and the United Kingdom, also emphasized that the priority given to increased production of fruits and vegetables should go hand in hand with a reduction in livestock dependency. production in order to limit the overall impact of the agricultural sector on the environment.
"We just wanted to ask the question" is what we produce overall with the recommendations of nutritionists, "said University of Guelph Professor Evan Fraser, co-author of Krishna KC's study , researcher at school. "The answer is no."
The study compared the 2011 UN agricultural production data with the nutritional guidelines set out in the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate or HHEP model, an internationally recognized model for healthy eating.
The study indicates that the HHEP recommends that 50% of a person's diet be composed of fruits and vegetables, 25% being dedicated to whole grains and the last quarter being reserved for a combination of proteins, fat and dairy products. The study notes that Canada's Food Guide, updated last year, calls for 27% fewer products, 34% less protein and 60% more dairy products than the HHEP model.
In order to feed everyone according to HHEP guidelines, the study revealed that world agriculture should produce 15 servings of fruits and vegetables per person per day. The 2011 data, however, suggested that current practices yielded only five servings.
The study also found a lower deficit in protein production, with three servings per person per day produced compared to the five recommended by the HHEP.
Fraser said that other food groups, however, were grossly overproduced.
According to the study, agriculture should produce one serving of oil and dairy, zero sugar and eight servings of whole grain per person per day to keep the population in compliance with HHEP.
Instead, he found that the 2011 farming practices produced three servings of oil and fat, four of sugar, one of milk and twelve servings of grain a day.
Fraser said overproduction was due to many complex reasons, noting that people in poor countries often focus on growing grain because they are a cheap and easy source of calories.
But he added that government subsidies and industry lobbies had also played an important role, citing as an example a multi-billion dollar US grant for corn growers .
According to Fraser, current crop / diet ratios play a direct role in the levels of diabetes, obesity and other conditions closely related to diet, adding that the gaps and results that would result would not would only intensify as the population of the planet continue to increase.
The solution is not as simple as growing more fruits and vegetables.
Fraser said that if the agricultural industry immediately corrects its imbalances and changes its production priorities to align with the HHEP, a new problem would emerge.
He predicted that this would release 51 million hectares of arable land in the world, but that the total area used for agriculture would increase by 407 million hectares, partly due to the increased availability of pastures. for livestock. Greenhouse gas emissions would also increase as a result, according to the study.
Fraser and the team of researchers said that a concentration on growing more fruits and vegetables should be accompanied by a reduction in livestock dependence in order to maintain the Sustainable global food supply.
Fraser said that he "can not imagine an agro-ecosystem without animals," arguing that animals play a role in recycling nutrients into the environment and in preserving the quality of certain types of land.
But he added that the best way forward would be to significantly increase the production of fruits and vegetables with a drop in animal protein.
"If we want to go forward to feed the future … and we want to be healthier and we do not want to increase the amount of land used by agriculture, we have to both move to a Harvard Healthy Eating Plate model and we have to move our protein consumption from livestock to plants, "he said.
Michelle McQuigge, Canadian Press
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