Glenn, in a comment on Luigi’s wheat heat post, has this to say:
The question about whether to change crops or change varieties needs more attention. There is an institutional inertia, such that CIMMYT would never suggest changing crops. Nor would any other commodity center since they have a vested interest in R+D oriented towards changing varieties. Agricultural biodiversity proponents would also seem to have a conflict of interest. If you could just change crops, the diversity within a crop may not be so important. I don’t believe that, but it would seem that some research on changing varieties or changing crops would be useful.
I think this is a very interesting and important point. (I disagree with the notion that proponents of agrobiodiversity aren’t interested, because diversity will remain important, but that’s a separate issue.) We are forever hearing that X people don’t eat Y, and to a certain extent that is true. The Bengal Famine of 1943 is often trotted out as the canonical example, when rice-eaters starved rather than eat wheat (though the story is definitely a lot more complicated than that). But world history is also absolutely full of counterexamples. Italians, for example, don’t like to be told that their pomodori, peperoncini, fagioli are Johnny-come-latelies to these shores, but they are. And then there’s the way maize and the potato swept all before them. We need to know more about the anthropology of diet and how people do indeed make the choice to adopt new staples and new condiments.
Seems to me that the people in northern India will keep eating chapatis even if wheat won’t be produced there. They’ll import it cheaply from the new agricultural frontiers in Canada and Siberia. And the farmers will make money growing other things like maize, for animal feed. So no worries for CIMMYT as long as it is not that drought tolerant type otherwise known as sorghum. Win-win.
And yet, according to Luigi’s Nibble today, the Peruvians are eating breadstuffs made with potato flour because they cannot afford to buy wheat.
Yes, but there are probably more Peruvians eating foie gras and lobster; most others seem to prefer rice. And now Peruvian prisoners are force fed with potato bread. My guess is that after their release they’ll switch back to cake.
I also believe that Glenn’s point should be taken serious. And if diets need to change because we don’t believe in global trade, that can be arranged, too. For instance, USDA has experience in promoting a bread-eating culture (to absorb PL 480 wheat exports), training bread bakers in South Korea…
Or is this the wrong example?
Don’t mess with PL 480. We used it to build the Peruvians a brand new genebank!