Junk Food Is Bad For Plants, Too
Most of us are familiar with the much-maligned Western diet and its mainstay of processed food products found in the middle aisles of the grocery store. Some of us beeline for the salty chips and others for the sugar-packed cereals. But we are not the only ones eating junk food. An awful lot of crops grown in the developed world eat a botanical version of this diet—main courses of conventional fertilizers with pesticide sides.
It’s undeniable that crops raised on fertilizers have produced historical yields. After all, the key ingredients of most fertilizers—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—make plants grow faster and bigger. And popular insecticides and herbicides knock back plant enemies. From 1960 to 2000, a time when the world’s population doubled, global grain production rose even more quickly. It tripled.1
But there is a trade-off. High-yielding crops raised on a steady diet of fertilizers appear to have lower levels of certain minerals and nutrients. The diet our crops eat influences what gets into our food, and what we get—or don’t get—out of these foods when we eat them.
Agronomists who analyzed archived wheat samples collected from 1873 to 1995 found significant declines in iron and zinc.2 A 2009 study of nutrient levels in United States crops concluded that there was strong evidence for 5 to 40 percent declines in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables over the previous 50 to 70 years.3
There are multiple factors at play in declining nutrient levels. Among them is the trend in plant breeding for larger seed, grain, fruit, or vegetable size.
