Food shortage: Staple substitutes

The global food shortage will change the way Brits eat their lunch and dinner.

According to a leading professor at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London, Brits need to start eating exotic crops like breadfruit, cowpea and Bambara groundnut grown in British colonies since wheat, maize and barley will become “increasingly vulnerable'' in future.

In a report published in The Telegraph, Stephen Hopper said that the world is dependent on a handful of key species of edible plants for food, and in the future due to the combined threat of disease, climate change and lack of production of commercial crops, people will be left with little choice but to eat crops like breadfruit – a grapefruit-sized fruit that was grown in British colonies in the 18th century – Barbados cherries, Bambara groundnuts, cowpeas and pigeon peas.

Limited species

Hopper also added that the world is fed from just a dozen species, even though there are more than 30,000 edible plants that can be used for consumption.

* Would you eat exotic crops as regular food items like wheat, maize and barley become more scarce? Vote in our poll

He said diversifying the range of crop species was a sensible approach as it would ensure supply from alternative crops should staples fail in any season.

He said that industrialised agriculture has led to the mass production of crops such as wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats and potatoes, which have become the staple forms of food around the world at the expense of other types of plants that were cleared to make way for these crops.

The International Panel on Climate Change has warned that food shortages will become far more common over the next 20 years. The panel predicts increasing levels of drought will hit some of the most important food- exporting areas of the world, including southern Europe, western Australia, southern Africa, the Middle East and central US.

Even in Britain, rising temperatures and new diseases will make it harder to grow crops in the arable areas of east and south-east England.

Edible plants