Okay, Chelsea, I'm not giving you the choice now.
As I was going through the mask, I realized,
I realized which one I want to cover.
And it's gonna be this one.
It's From the Guardian, written by Miranda Lipton
on March 28th, 2024.
Vegetables are losing their nutrients.
Can the decline be reversed?
In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists
at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery.
43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a market decrease
in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.
According to that research, the calcium in green beans
dropped from 65 to 37 milligrams.
Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half an asparagus.
Broccoli stocks had less iron.
Nutrient loss has continued since that study.
More recent research has documented
the declining nutrient value in some staple crops
due to the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
A 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels
reduced its protein, iron, and zinc content.
The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns
about crops nutritional value.
That's prompted the emergence of a process
called biofortification, a strategy to replenish
lost nutrients for those that foods never had
in the first place.
Biofortification encompasses multiple technologies.
One involves genetically modifying a crop
to increase its nutritional contents,
which allows for the rapid introduction of new traits.
Another, agronomic biofortification,
utilizes nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments
to concentrate particular minerals and plants.
Lastly, selective plant breeding can produce new varieties,
though it can take a decade or more
to yield a single variety.
Biofortification is an alternative to fortification,
which has been part of the US industrial food system
since the 1920s, when the nation began boosting
table salt with iodine to reduce conditions related
to mineral deficiency, such as goiter.
Biofortification puts nutrients directly into the seed,
as opposed to fortification, which adds nutrients
into the food once it's grown.
On the global stage, international stakeholders,
such as the World Health Organization
and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research, CGIAR, have deemed the development of nutrient-enhanced
biofortification crops as one of their leading goals
in achieving food security.
Pratik Unial, program leader at the International Food Policy
Research Institute, explained that because of climate change,
iron and zinc have been dipping by 30% to 40%
due to excessive rainfall, cold, and physical damage.
Harvest Plus is an organization under IFPRI,
and it provides global leadership on biofortification,
evidence, and technology.
It is currently working with governments
in more than 30 countries, and its biofortified varieties
have been planted by more than 100 million farmers
across the world, predominantly in developing countries.
By 2030, the organization estimates
1 billion people will be benefiting
from biofortified food.
Quote, we're about 20 years into a 40-year program,
said Jenny Walton, head of commercialization and scaling
at Harvest Plus.
While malnutrition demonstrates the urgent need
to increase the nutrient density of crops globally,
Benjamin Cohen, a professor of environmental studies
at Lafayette College, points to biofortification
as a band-aid rather than a solution to the problem.
Quote, my concerns are about funders,
based on my policy makers choosing to invest
in biofortification instead of supporting more
enduring smallholder models of farming
that could be more efficient and resilient
than large-scale systems.
Promoting biofortification suggests solving a problem
that should not exist if not for large-scale,
capital-intensive agriculture.
It's likely that those same agricultural processes
would only be further entrenched with biofortification.
Harvest Plus sees plant breeding
as the most insustainable way of biofortifying.
It relies on existing plant genes.
The organization works exclusively with staple crops
and is developing them to contain
a higher amount of vitamin A, iron, and zinc,
three micronutrients identified by the World Health Organization
to be the most efficient in diets globally.
That approach means that in places such as Pakistan,
where diets are wheat-heavy, fortifying that grain,
could make population levels change.
Harvest Plus has already released 400 varieties
of staple crops, none of them are patented.
I think that's far enough into that article.
It's interesting they take the spin of,
oh, don't worry, we're fixing the problem,
but they do clearly identify this as a climate change issue.
And that's a big problem.
Yeah.
I mean, the longer this podcast goes on,
the more I realize we're just fucked by all life.
Oh, we're so fucked.
Yeah.
All means possible.
In any way, you could possibly even not even think
that we might not be fucked.
We're fucked.
Yeah, and it's funny that you say that,
because I outright avoid the actual terrible news articles,
because I find them too doomy.
So now it's vegetables.
Yeah.
We're fucked by.
Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense when you actually think about it,
unfortunately.
And I think I've heard about this before,
that it like they're losing their,
I can't remember what sense I heard this.
Yeah, I had heard it too.
I had always thought that it was more so
due to diminished soils and the fact that we're using oil
as a fertilizer, more or less,
in that you're not getting all the nutrients that it needs.
But apparently it's more climate change.
And it's funny because I've heard the argument
from people who don't really care about climate change,
that the world's actually getting greener.
This is clearly showing that even if it's getting greener
or things are growing more,
it doesn't mean that it's good for humans.
Maybe those people just need to know
what the billionaires are doing.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
That's my two cents anyway.
Okay.
But yeah, not only are all our foods filling us with plastic,
the plastic clearly is just replacing
that the minerals that should be in there kicking them out.
Yes.
So hopefully our body can just make it out.
And with that belt of doomy gloominess,
just stay with us.
There's things to live for,
including an episode on Friday.
So we'll see you then.
Bye.