Global relationships between crop diversity and nutritional stability

Nicholson, Charlie C.; Emery, Benjamin F.; Niles, Meredith T.

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25615-2

Global relationships between crop diversity and nutritional stability

Journal Article · Tue Sep 07 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25615-2· OSTI ID:1834086

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Lund Univ. (Sweden); Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
Univ. of Vermont, Burlington, VT (United States); Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Univ. of Vermont, Burlington, VT (United States)

Nutritional stability – a food system’s capacity to provide sufficient nutrients despite disturbance – is an important, yet challenging to measure outcome of diversified agriculture. Using 55 years of data across 184 countries, we assemble 22,000 bipartite crop-nutrient networks to quantify nutritional stability by simulating crop and nutrient loss in a country, and assess its relationship to crop diversity across regions, over time and between imports versus in country production. We find a positive, saturating relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability across countries, but also show that over time nutritional stability remained stagnant or decreased in all regions except Asia. These results are attributable to diminishing returns on crop diversity, with recent gains in crop diversity among crops with fewer nutrients, or with nutrients already in a country’s food system. Finally, imports are positively associated with crop diversity and nutritional stability, indicating that many countries’ nutritional stability is market exposed.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDA; Lund University

Grant/Contract Number:: NA0003525

OSTI ID:: 1834086

Report Number(s):: SAND--2020-8063J; 687905

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 12; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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