Where does our food come from? A world map

Since the origins of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, humans have selected and grown crops for specific characteristics, shaping where and which crops are grown today.

As Tessa di Grandi of Visual Capitalist explains, today our food system is completely global and many of the world's main producers of staple crops are located in countries far from their historical origins. For example, Brazil is now the largest soybean producer in the world, even though this crop is native to East Asia.
The following infographic, created by Brazil Potash , shows the historical origins of crops before their worldwide domestication and the major producers of our staple crops today.

Staple crops are those that are most commonly grown and consumed. May vary from country to country depending on availability.

In 2020, sugar cane, corn, wheat and rice made up about 50% of global agricultural production.

But when the production and distribution of staple crops are threatened, the consequences can be felt globally. Let's look at the countries that were the top three producers of some of our staple crops in 2020.

Severing relations and supplies with any of these countries can spell a major food security problem, with the possibility of scarcity, if not starvation, and that is what we are seeing now with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

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The article Where our food comes from. A world map comes from Scenari Economics .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/da-dove-proviene-il-nostro-cibo-una-mappa-mondiale/ on Sun, 04 Dec 2022 10:55:12 +0000.