[MCN] Globalization trumps buy-local in world food market

[Lance Olsen]

Foreign' crops dominate national food consumption and farming 
practices worldwide
Public Release: 7-Jun-2016

The origins of over two-thirds of the grains, legumes, fruits, 
vegetables, and other agricultural crops countries grow and consume 
can be traced to ancient breadbaskets in distant parts of the world, 
according to an exhaustive peer-reviewed report published today.

JOURNAL
Proceedings of the Royal Society B
get your pdf here:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/283/1832/20160792.full.pdf

Excerpt from the abstract:

"We estimate the degree to which countries use crops from regions of 
diversity other than their own ('foreign crops'), and quantify 
changes in this usage over the past 50 years. Countries are highly 
interconnected with regard to primary regions of diversity of the 
crops they cultivate and/or consume. Foreign crops are extensively 
used in food supplies (68.7% of national food supplies as a global 
mean are derived from foreign crops) and production systems (69.3% of 
crops grown are foreign). Foreign crop usage has increased 
significantly over the past 50 years, including in countries with 
high indigenous crop diversity."
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"What can be said with some assurance is that there is a unique and 
nearly ubiquitous compound, with the empirical formula 
H(2960)O(1480)C(1480)N(16)P(1.8)S, called living matter.  Its 
synthesis, on an oxidized and uncarboxylated earth, is the most 
intricate feat of chemical engineering ever performed - and the most 
delicate operation that people have ever tampered with."

Edward S. Deevey, Jr.  Mineral Cycles,
Scientific American, September 1970.




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