{"id":168096,"date":"2014-03-04T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/fewer-crops-now-feeding-the-world\/"},"modified":"2014-03-04T08:00:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T08:00:39","slug":"fewer-crops-now-feeding-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/03\/04\/fewer-crops-now-feeding-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Fewer Crops&#8217; Now Feeding The World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img.ghanamma.com\/uploads\/2014\/03\/57e7899799901_303024.jpg\" border=\"1\" style=\"border:1px solid #999; padding:1px; margin-top:2px;\" \/><span class=\"peace_content_text_1\">Fewer crop species are feeding the world than 50 years ago &#8211; raising concerns about the resilience of the global food system, a study has shown.<\/p>\n<p>The authors warned a loss of diversity meant more people were dependent on key crops, leaving them more exposed to harvest failures.<\/p>\n<p>Higher consumption of energy-dense crops could also contribute to a global rise in heart disease and diabetes, they added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Over the past 50 years, we are seeing that diets around the world are changing and they are becoming more similar &#8211; what we call the &#8216;globalised diet&#8217;,&#8221; co-author Colin Khoury, a scientist from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This diet is composed of big, major cops such as wheat, rice, potatoes and sugar.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It also includes crops that were not important 50 years ago but have become very important now, particularly oil crops like soybean,&#8221; he told BBC News.<\/p>\n<p>While wheat has long been a staple crop, it is now a key food in more than 97% of countries listed in UN data, the study showed.<\/p>\n<p>And from relative obscurity, soybean had become &#8220;significant&#8221; in the diets of almost three-quarters of nations.<\/p>\n<p>He added that while these food crops played a major role in tackling global hunger, the decline in crop diversity in the globalised diet limited the ability to supplement the energy-dense part of the diet with nutrient-rich foods.<\/p>\n<p>Amid the crops recording a decline in recent decades were millets, rye, yams, sweet potatoes and cassava.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fewer crop species are feeding the world than 50 years ago &#8211; raising concerns about the resilience of the global food system, a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}