Where did our food crops originate?
How did they get to here? 

Food Miles

It looks likely that more will come from afar in the future, so my friend Tim Lang called it food miles. This proportion is about the largest in the world, similar to Japan and several Arab countries. The EU produces a higher proportion than us. Much of our fruits and vegetables come from abroad. But where does that food come from? About half of what we import comes from the EU. Who are the biggest food exporters in the world, and where are they? 

While studying for my Masters in Plant Science (Wye College, London University), the main component was 'Tropical Crops'. I found out that most food plants grown for export purposes are on the other on the other side of the world from where they were first cultivated. Examples of export food crops grown on the opposite side of the world from where they were first cultivated can be found right  See right-hand column

Some are 'just up the road' - Maize from Mexico to America, Tea from China to India, although both have been through Africa - Maize in the West and Tea in the East. Very few are now grown for export where they originally came from. Garlic is one such exception. 

Here are some possible reasons,

Yorkshire Tea may boast that much of its tea comes from Assam, as it is the 'best place for it to grow'. Clearly, growing conditions are better than in Yorkshire, but tea does not originate in Assam, but where all the tea comes from - China.

That these plants haven't developed where they originated/cultivated, makes for many great stories of how these valuable food crops move around and why. We miss these stories if we think that these plants have been plonked there by nature.

Plants from the tropics can generally grow anywhere in the tropics, and temperate crops can generally grow anywhere in temperate climates. This is not to say that the 'terroir' of a plant (the combination of soil and climate that creates specific flavours of wines and many more foods) is not important. These are characters rather than determinants.

We are going to tell the stories of these migrations, We will start with the maps and outlines of the Natural History Museum which we believe is about as authoritative as it gets. Then we try and determine the main causes for these movements.  adding other elements that tell us a lot about our history, and how we have got to where we are today.