The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 152

higher micronutrient concentrations, the term “biofortification” has been extended to
encompass mineral fertilization of crops to increase their micronutrient content (e.g.,
White and Broadley 2009). In this case the crops are not bred to accumulate more micro-
nutrients, but rather mineral fertilizer is applied to mineral-deficient soils to increase
the availability of essential minerals to the crops. Other approaches that are sometimes
also subsumed under “biofortification” include the improvement of the nutrient profiles
of crops in general, such as quality-protein maize, crops with higher levels of omega-3
fatty acids, or a modified composition of starch or dietary fibers (Pray et al. 2007; de
Groote et al. 2010; Nuss and Tanumihardjo 2011; Zhao and Shewry 2011).
Therefore, “biofortification” could be more widely understood as “the process of add-
ing nutritional value to a crop” (Montagnac et al. 2009); this is in contrast to “fortifi-
cation,” where nutritional value is added to a processed food product. To differentiate
the breeding approaches from the fertilizer approach, sometimes these concepts are
referred to as genetic and agronomic biofortification, respectively (e.g., Cakmak 2008).
In this chapter the main focus is on biofortification through plant breeding, which can
be further differentiated into conventional breeding and the use of genetic engineering.
While the rationale to do biofortification is the same in both cases, regulatory require-
ments and acceptance can be different for these two approaches, which will be discussed
in more detail throughout this chapter.
Biofortification builds on the regular consumption of important amounts of a crop
by all members of the respective target groups. For this reason biofortification is usu-
ally done with staple crops. Given that the poor often consume large quantities of these
crops (but little else), and that it is primarily the poor who are malnourished, bioforti-
fication is also self-targeting. Moreover, in contrast to the other micronutrient inter-
ventions that are linked to (centralized) food processing facilities, health centers, or
extension services, biofortification can take place on the farmers' fields; that is, biofor-
tification can help reach the malnourished in remote rural areas. As these people usu-
ally have less access to other programs, biofortification complements these approaches
(Nestel et al. 2006; Tanumihardjo et al. 2008; Mayer et al. 2008; Meenakshi et al. 2010;
Bouis et al. 2011). Biofortification efforts are explicitly targeted at regions where at-risk
populations live, also taking into account the major crops already grown and consumed
in these areas. To this end, methods are developed to help set the regional focus of bio-
fortification interventions by using spatial data on the risk of nutrient deficiency and on
crop production, as well as socioeconomic and food consumption data (Zapata-Caldas
et al. 2009; Rose et al. 2009).
Apart from this complementary focus of biofortification, another argument in favor
of this approach is its expected sustainability. Other micronutrient programs impose
recurrent costs at the individual or national level. With commercial fortification, con-
sumers may decide to buy cheaper unfortified products when they come under eco-
nomic hardship; in the case of mandatory fortification, food producers have an
incentive to reduce the fortificant in their products; and supplementation programs are
vulnerable to changing funding priorities of governments or donors. Once developed
and disseminated, biofortified crops are not subject to such vagaries; rather, they can be