Global relationships between crop diversity and nutritional stability

Nutritional stability, a food system's capacity to provide sufficient nutrients despite disturbance, is crucial yet challenging to measure in diversified agriculture. Using 55 years of data from 184 countries (22,000 crop-nutrient networks), this study simulates crop and nutrient loss to quantify nutritional stability and its relationship with crop diversity across regions, over time, and between imports and domestic production. A positive, saturating relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability is found, but stability remained stagnant or decreased in all regions except Asia. This is attributed to diminishing returns on crop diversity, with recent gains involving crops with fewer nutrients or those already present. Imports positively correlate with crop diversity and nutritional stability, indicating market exposure for many countries.

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