Could Biofortified Crops Be The Key To Solving Global Hunger?

For around 2 billion people in the world, a meal is not necessarily a source of nutrition. Among the poorest populations, starchy staple crops like potatoes and cassava make up the bulk of people’s diets. The people surviving off these crops “may not feel hungry,” says Bev Postma, CEO of HarvestPlus, “but they’re not getting a diverse, nutritious meal, and this ‘hidden hunger’ can lead to blindness, disease, and stunting.” For children under the age of 11, who grow up without consistent access to adequate nutrition, the developmental effects are irreversible; mothers who lack essential vitamins and minerals are unable to pass them onto their children.

HarvestPlus is working to eradicate the hidden hunger epidemic—not by diversifying the crops that people rely on most, but by ensuring that those starchy staple crops also deliver essential nutrients like zinc, vitamin A, and iron, which are too often missing from people’s diets.

That line of inquiry led Bouis to the Plant, Soil, and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell University, where he encountered several researchers looking into the potential of cross-breeding plants to result in higher nutrient levels, without compromising yield. He teamed up with scientists who were piloting an orange-tinted sweet potato high in vitamin A in Mozambique, and others breeding cassava and maize tinged with extra vitamin A. However, the concept was still relatively new–the term “biofortification” wasn’t coined until 2001–and Bouis struggled to find funders to support the research and pilot programs that would prove his concept. “He basically went around with a tin cup for 10 years, looking for funds,” Postma says. That is, until he met Bill Gates.

He published several papers on his research, proving the concept, and then, working with the Consultative Group on International Agriculture (CGIAR), a coalition of 16 organizations specializing in global crop development, Bouis launched HarvestPlus in 2003. For the first five years, the organization identified target populations–sub-Saharan Africa, rural India–where hidden hunger was most prevalent, and solidified research to prove that biofortification could scale.

The key to HarvestPlus’ success–why it’s already reached 20 million people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America–is that it does not require a behavior change on the part of the people it’s working with. “It’s very hard to get people to change their eating habits,” Postma says. “We’re instead seeing what’s already on their plates, and doing a like-for-like swap for an ingredient with more nutrients.” If people are already eating beans, HarvestPlus will swap in beans supplemented with iron; if people are baking bread or chapatti, HarvestPlus will get them wheat fortified with zinc; if people cook cassava or maize, they can do the same with vitamin A-tinged vegetables.

While the deployment strategies differ widely by country, the transition, once HarvestPlus is established, is generally smooth: Once the farmers are convinced that the new crops are climate and pest resistant, and won’t lower their yield, they can switch seamlessly to the new seeds after a harvest. Once farmers grow the seed, the nutrients remain in the crops for future harvests. And while HarvestPlus has yet to publish their findings on taste, as they’re only just beginning to research them, a blind taste-test in Zambia found that children actually prefer the orange, vitamin-A tinged corn to white corn. It tastes sweeter to them, Postma says, though their scientists are not yet sure why.

HarvestPlus has been selected as one of the eight semi-finalists in the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition, which will give a $100 million grant to a single proposal that promises a real and measurable solution to a pressing problem of our time; winners will be chosen later in the summer. Whether or not HarvestPlus is awarded the grant, Postma says the organization is committed to reaching 1 billion people by 2030.

While HarvestPlus’ work is among the most straightforward and scalable approaches to solving hunger out there, Postma is clear-eyed about the situation they’re tackling. “This problem long term can only be resolved by lifting these people out of poverty,” she says. “Let’s be very clear here: Whatever HarvestPlus is doing is just bridging that gap that shouldn’t be there in the first place.”