How Chefs Are Supporting Biodiversity in the Face of Climate Change

It would be easy to walk past Teranga in New York City’s East Harlem and overlook it as any other fast-casual spot. The format is similar to other popular Chipotle-esque eateries where you customize your dish, but the ingredients—such as fonio an ancient West African grain similar to both couscous and quinoa, with a mild, nutty flavor—stand out.

“Today’s food system is limiting our global diet to four major crops: corn, rice, soy and potatoes,” Teranga chef and the author of The Fonio Cookbook: An Ancient Grain Rediscovered, Pierre Thiam said. “This limited diet is affecting both our planet and our health. By supporting underutilized crops in my menus, I contribute in saving our planet’s biodiversity. In the current context, designing a menu should be a conscious and responsible act. When choosing ingredients for my dishes, I try to be mindful of the impact on the environment as well as the flavor and nutrition. By offering grains like fonio, that are drought resistant, versatile, nutritious and delicious I check all the boxes.”

Thiam who grew up in West Africa where ingredients like baobab, millet, amaranth or fonio, are standard fare is one of a number of chefs working to expand diners’ palates while supporting biodiversity.

“Our food system currently rests on a very fragile foundation. While it may seem like we have a lot of variety when we walk down our supermarket aisles, we’re actually losing the biodiversity of our foods every day. The United States has lost 90 percent of fruit and vegetable varieties since the 1900s. And while there are still over 30,000 edible plant species that exist, just 12 crops provide 80 percent of our calories,” said Marie Haga, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which works to support crop conservation in genebanks.

Dependence on a limited range of crops means the food supply is vulnerable to drought, pests, disease outbreaks and a changing climate.

“Take the Irish potato famine: in the early 1800’s, Ireland grew a lot of potatoes. The problem was that they grew a disproportionate amount of one kind, the Lumper variety, which happened to be especially susceptible to late blight. So when the late blight hit the country, there was a major crop failure causing millions of people to die from hunger. Had the country grown a more diverse variety of potatoes and not been so over-reliant on one variety, the famine wouldn’t have caused such devastation, as what one potato may be susceptible to, another perhaps can withstand,” Haga said.

As the world’s population continues to grow and the planet warms, the shrinking variety of food crops and livestock could contribute to a global hunger crisis. Chefs, like Thiam and Mailea Weger of lou in Nashville, Tennessee who uses ingredients like palm sugar, buck wheat, teff, amarantha flours  and more in her dishes which are often paired with natural wine, are part of a growing number of chefs using ingredients that could be the key to preserving and expanding food diversity.

“By actively championing biodiversity inside and outside the kitchen, chefs can play a key role in creating interest in and a market for more diverse ingredients, helping to support farmers’ livelihoods, improve diets and strengthen our food systems,”  Haga said, who through the Global Crop Trust is working to bring 2,020 chefs together by the end of 2020, to be advocates for biodiversity through our Food Forever campaign.

Supporting biodiversity isn’t just for professional chefs, though. 

“Start simple,” Weger advises home chefs. “Pick a few items that are easier to find or substitute out like sugars, lactose free milks, or alternation flours. Try brown rice instead of white, use honey in recipes instead of white sugar, play around with kimchi or saurkraut recipes, substitute vegetable oil for a more heart healthy oil like avocado oil or evoo.”

You might just find a new flavor experience you love, while helping to build the foundation for a resilient food system.