Wild Foods - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 480

Table 19.2. The diversity of aquatic wild food species within rice agroecosystems
in four Asian contexts (from Halwart 2008)

Cambodia China Laos Vietnam

Plants 13 20 20 15

Amphibians 2 3 10 3

Crustaceans 6 4 5 3

Fish 70 54 26 14

Molluscs 1 5 8 7

Reptiles 8 1 7 3

Insects 2 - 16 6

Total 102 87 92 51

agricultural communities in four Asian countries, with total use varying from 51 to 102
species (overall mean, 83; plants, 17; animals, 66). Boxes 1 and 2 summaries the impor-
tance and use of wild foods in two particularly vulnerable agricultural systems: tropical
swidden cultivation, and dryland agriculture.
Evidence suggests that wild food species are declining in many agricultural landscapes
(MEA 2005). The spread of agriculture and the homogenization of agricultural landscapes
increasingly limit the availability and use of wild foods of nutritional importance to agri-
cultural communities, but most of all to the landless poor and other vulnerable groups
(Scoones et al. 1992; Pretty 2002). Their continued availability depends on the maintenance
of synergies between farming and wild biodiversity (Pretty 2007; Royal Society 2009).

The Diversity of Wild Foods Used

Food security has come to depend on a small handful of widely cultivated species.
Over 50 percent of the world's daily requirement of proteins and calories comes from
just 3 crops—wheat, maize, and rice (Jaenicke et al., 2006), and 12 species contribute
to 80 percent of total dietary intake. Of 200,000 seed plant species, just 30 provide
90 percent of the world's food products (Hammer 2004), and only 150 crops are widely
commercialized. Yet, ethnobotanical surveys of wild plants indicate that more than
7,000 species have been used for human food at some stage in human history (Grivetti
and Ogle 2000; MEA 2005) and at present, wild foods continue to provide great
dietary diversity to those who rely on them. Some communities use 200 or more wild
species for food (Kuhnlein et al., 2009); in India, 600 plant species are known to have
food value (Rathore, 2009); DeFoliart (1992) records 1,000 species of insects used for
food worldwide, with 600 of these in Africa; 80 have been reported in Thailand alone
(Morris 2008). Wild edible fungi are important sources of food and income for some