‘Global consumption of vegetables going down’

World Vegetable Centre (WVC) Director Marco Wopereis said vegetable consumption across the world was going down alarmingly, with people preferring junk food and processed food over vegetables and fruits.

Patancheru: World Vegetable Centre (WVC) Director Marco Wopereis said vegetable consumption across the world was going down alarmingly, with people preferring junk food and processed food over vegetables and fruits. While people from developed nations were preferring junk food, citizens of backward countries could not afford to buy enough vegetables or fruits.

Speaking to Telangana Today on the sidelines of the 50th Anniversary of the WVC at its South and Central Asia office in the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) campus here on Thursday, Wopereis said the recommended per capita vegetable consumption was 240 grams per day for a person. However, consumption in Asian countries, excluding East Asian countries, and Sub-Saharan countries, was very low. While the per capita consumption in India was put at 145 grams per day, the consumption in some African countries was as low as 60 grams per day.

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Shockingly, the consumption of vegetables is going down even in wealthy countries like France. Underlining the importance of spreading awareness among the people, Wopereis said governments and non-governmental organisations must educate people on the need of consuming vegetables and fruits in sufficient quantity to keep them healthy. Only people of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and a few other East Asian countries were consuming nearly 240 grams of vegetables per day. Increased income was one of the main reasons for the increased consumption of meat across the world.

Talking about the increased use of pesticides to control insects on vegetable crops, Wopereis said farmers must opt for alternative methods to restrict use of pesticides which could cause more health issues. Farmers should use biopesticides and yellow traps apart from enriching soil health with compost which would eventually give more harvest in an organic way. Underlining the importance of carrying out more research on horticulture crop research, Wopereis said countries were spending just three to four percent on horticulture research while the rest was spent on the agriculture sector. Talking about fluctuating prices, he said governments should set up processing centres to store vegetables in the form of paste and juice, also adding that farmers should consider greenhouse cultivation.