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.