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Did you know that the most major export crops are grown on the other side of the world from where they were first cultivated?
Cocoa, grown mainly in West Africa, originated in the Amazon. Soybeans were first grown in China, which now imports $billion worth of them from the Americas. There are many stories to tell, including an American president stealing rice seeds from Italy under 'pain of death'.
Not natural
Not natural
Most of us take for granted, without really questioning, that the crops are grown best in their 'natural habitat' - where they came from. We presume that that they are growing where they do because that is where the best conditions for growth are. Yet we find that several big crops push their biological limits. eg coffee in Brazil - the second largest exporter - is often hit by frost, as commodity trading prices confirm. Maize keeps being grown ever further North. Much plant science has been given to growing crops beyond their ranges.
This fact about most export crops being on the other side of their original cultivation was taught to me by my Professor Purseglove who wrote the classic 'Tropical Crops' books, still the standard today. We would discuss why that was. He tended to the idea that the plants could escape their original pests and diseases. I wondered whether the answer was just biological, so started reading 'Plantation Agriculture' by Courtenay. He spelled out the movement was due more to the availability of labour. Time and again, the crops moved from small holdings to plantations - on the other side of the world, worked by migrants - sometimes slaves, but not always.
Other people's land 2X ours
Other people's land 2X ours
land outside UK to growThe UK imports nearly half of the food we eat, having increased from around a quarter in the mid-eighties. This has a disproportionate impact on land. We contribute only one-third of the land used to grow the crops we eat, according to the Royal Society. This map refers to 2009, and things have not got better since the arrival of ultra-processed foods, because they are processed all the way along the journey from the fields to make it easier and cheaper to move, and mangled in the process
Food Miles
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.
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.
CROPS GROWN FOR EXPORT ON OTHER SIDE OF WORLD FROM WHICH FIRST CULTIVATED
Coffee (Africa to S. America)
Cocoa (Andes to West Africa)
Sugar (Far East to Caribbean)
Bananas (S E Asia to Caribbean)
Wheat (Near East to America)
Soy (China to South America)
Peanuts (Argentina to India
Palm Oil (West Africa to S E Asia)
Citrus fruits (China to California)
Kiwi fruits (China to California)
Rice (China to Southern USA)
Vanilla (Central S.America to Indonesia)
Almonds & Cashews different way round!
The Navigation (top) is based on the classification used by the first person to track the 'Origin of Cultivated Plants' (full free electronic copy), Alphonse de Candolle, in 1882.
While these plants cannot talk, they can nevertheless tell us stories that reflect our culture and values both past and present. We think that knowing about how these food plants have moved round the world can help us learn about our geography, botany, economics and.....
History…celebrates the battle-fields whereon we meet our deaths, but scorns to speak of ploughed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the king’s bastards, but cannot tell the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly.” From ‘The Wonders of Instinct’ (p.291 in Chapter on ‘Cabbage-Caterpillar’), written over a 100 years ago by the fabulous and largely forgotten naturalist J H Fabre, commonly called ‘the Insect Man’.
Economics, clearly the movement of these crops has made a lot of money for those in control of he movement - witness palm oil and tea for jut two. However, it raises the question - how much did these plant movers pay for the seeds/plants they took? Did Kew gardens ever pay a single penny, or France a franc or Spain a peso for anything they took? Many consider it steeling - witness recent complaints from Brazil about Whickam 'stealing' around 70,000 rubber tree seeds (OK we don't chew much rubber but it is an important crop) going through Kew and then transported to Sri Lanka and thence to Malaysia. See Seeds of Discord which examines whether Wickham is 'father of BioPiracy'. These issues are alive today as corporate companies replace countries in their zeal for new seeds. See my other webpage/site: Who owns our seeds?.
But most of all it can help explain some of the tensions in the world today. And unless we understand how these have arisen, we could make some drastic mistakes in the future - just as Fabre predicted,
Many wild crop relatives including Avocados and vanilla among dozens facing extinction
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