The Great Food Myth: Why diversity Is Best?
Even though the world is full of a variety of foods,
humans rely on very few crops for our food needs.
Plant scientists say that there are about 30,000
species of plants that humans could use for food.
However, today, humans rely on as few as 20
species of plants for all our food. Of those 20 species,
three species of plant provide more than half of all food production.
Which three crops feed the world?
Amazing Facts about the Diversity of Rain Forests!
One of the things the School for Field Studies students will learn this semester is about the importance of protecting and maintaining the rich range of life in our rain forests. When it comes time to improve or replace a plant crop, or create a new crop, we must turn to our rain forests to do this.
- Biologists estimate that over half the species of life on earth live in the tropics, and many of those live in the rain forest.
- In the branches of just one tree in the rain forest you might find 10,000 species of insects, spiders and mites.
- On one acre of rain forest soil you might find over two hundred different species of tree (to understand how amazing this is, consider that in a North American temperate rain forest you might find 10 species on one acre of soil.)
- About 3,000 species of fish live in the Amazon river--that's more species than we find in the whole Atlantic Ocean!