Five plants that could
help feed the world
Diet for a hotter climate

1. Amaranth

Across Africa and Asia, amaranth has long been eaten as a vegetable and has found its way into European kitchens, with Ukraine coming in as the crop’s largest producer on the continent.

While its leaves can be sautéed or cooked into a stir-fry, the seed is commonly toasted and then eaten with honey or milk. A complete protein with all nine essential amino acids, amaranth is a good source of vitamins and antioxidants.

The plant that survived colonization

2. Fonio

As the climate continues to change, fonio’s drought resistance and ability

to grow in poor soil has made it a standout crop in water-scarce regions.

It also has important nutritional value

as a low glycemic, gluten-free grain – making it a good source of amino acids for people with diabetes or

gluten intolerance.

For thousands of years, farmers across west Africa have cultivated fonio – a kind of millet that tastes like a slightly nuttier couscous or quinoa.

The drought-resistant traditional grain

3. Cowpeas

Because cowpeas are highly drought tolerant, they’re also a good candidate

as the climate changes. They could become an alternative to beans, like pinto and black beans, with similar flavor profiles that may soon become more difficult to grow.

Although cowpea production has declined in the US in recent decades,
the crop is hugely important in much
of Africa. Nigeria is the world’s largest cowpea producer.

The fully edible plant

4. Taro

In the tropics of south-east Asia and Polynesia, taro has long been grown as
a root vegetable, not unlike the potato.
But as rising temperatures threaten cultivation of the crop in its natural habitat, farmers in the continental US
are trying to adapt the tropical perennial to grow as a temperate annual, because it cannot survive the cold of US winters.

Adapting the tropical crop

for colder climes

5. Kernza

While many alternative crops are just plants that were grown somewhere else in the world generations ago, others have been cultivated specifically
to withstand climate change.

The crop bred for the climate crisis

In 2019, the Kansas-based Land Institute, a non-profit research organization focused on sustainable agriculture, introduced Kernza, a cereal crop developed from intermediate wheatgrass that could become a substitute for annual grains like wheat.
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