- Global food systems currently rely on a narrow range of species, despite the availability of vast biodiversity, which undermines both nutrition and resilience.
- Diversification of food systems, enabled by advances in genomics and gene editing, is essential for building resilience, improving health outcomes, and ensuring sustainable nutrition.
- Modern gene-editing technologies have significantly reduced the cost and time required to develop new, resilient crop varieties, making it feasible to tap into genetic resources from global gene banks.
Speaking at a panel at Future Fit Asia (FFA) in Singapore on May 12, Dr Ismahane Elouafi emphasised that increasing diversity in food systems was critical to improving both resilience and nutrition.
However, today’s food systems rely on a strikingly small number of species, despite the vast biodiversity available globally.
“Essentially, out of half a million species, we are concentrating on fewer than 200. Is this biodiversity? Is this diversification of food? Definitely not,” said the executive managing director of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Elouafi said the agricultural system must be re-examined at its core, with diversification identified as the fundamental principle.
“What [CGIAR is] trying to do now is diversify. It’s looking at the genetic resources and bringing genes from those genetic resources to develop more resilient species for the future.”
CGIAR’s push to tap into genetic resources and develop more resilient crops is part of its broader goal of ensuring food systems can sustainably deliver nutritious diets.
“It’s very important to protect the environment to be able to produce the food we need for this population, and not any food, nutritious food, that can really allow everybody to grow to their potential and not be sick, so we can really reduce the health bill.”
The greatest innovation yet
Elouafi elaborated that modern science was key to fixing today’s food system.
“It starts from the food, starts from the genetics, starts from the agricultural practices. So, my most central solution is the difference in diversification and diversification using science.”
With gene-editing technology becoming more affordable and accessible, it has become feasible to reverse this trend.
“To develop a new variety of maize, chickpea or lentil, it would have typically taken about $100 million and around 15 years. Now, with new technologies like gene-editing — which is one of the greatest innovations of recent years — that $100 million becomes about $5 million, and those 15 years become roughly three to four years,” said Elouafi.
This dramatic reduction in both cost and time is altering the fundamentals of crop innovation.
She also highlighted the importance of global gene banks, which preserve the genetic material needed to diversify agriculture.
“Today, we can breed more species. In the past, we couldn’t because it was too expensive, which pushed us into monoculture. Now it’s time to go back to local species, bring them out of gene banks, and develop varieties that farmers can grow without needing millions of hectares. We need to change the business model to enable more production and greater diversity.”
Against this backdrop, Elouafi considers Asia well positioned to transition towards more diversified systems.
“If I look at Asia, it is on the right path. It is diverse and produces different things at the same time, perhaps because its large population has pushed people to mix systems. When you look at other major agricultural countries like Australia, Canada and the US, you often find large monocultures maintained with heavy inputs. You cannot sustain that indefinitely.”
However, the challenge will be to maintain and enhance this diversity while scaling production and meeting growing demand.
One of the biggest barriers to progress has been the tendency to treat agriculture, health and environmental systems separately, rather than as an interconnected whole, said Elouafi.
She added that agriculture must move away from siloed innovation and embrace more diverse food systems to improve health and resilience,
“We have been putting it in silos. It doesn’t work when you really push a technology only in health, but not in agriculture or only in agriculture… You are not serving human beings on this planet. We need to bring things together.”
