Petal power:
Striking infographic brings the world’s vegetable blind spots into focus

– 11 December 2025 –

A striking new “flowerhead” infographic sends a powerful message about a global food system in which vegetables are undervalued, underused and under-conserved – despite years of warnings from international authorities.

Using four domains – Diets, Crop Production, Crop Biodiversity and Crop Research – the graphic’s petals present a simple truth: what the science recommends in relation to vegetables is not what the world actually does. It reveals structural problems in the food system, and the idea that while countries and institutions know that vegetables matter, they continue to invest, produce and consume as if they don’t.

The image – Global Food Group Metrics – was produced by Jim Smith Design, and is a sneak preview of a series of graphics in a forthcoming paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (preprint and dataset).

“We’ve been hearing for years that we need to grow and eat more vegetables,” said Maarten van Zonneveld, lead author of the forthcoming paper, and head of the genetic resources program at WorldVeg, which operates the world’s largest public genebank for vegetables.

“But year after year, this call for greater inclusion of vegetables in diets, production and conservation is not sufficiently reflected in research funding or policymaking. This graphic captures this incongruous state of affairs in one stunning image.”

Here’s a deeper dive into the powerful messages behind the pretty petals:

1. Diets: Vegetable intake is still far below recommended levels

The Diets domain shows a stark imbalance: although vegetables and grains have similar recommended intake levels, people consume far fewer vegetables. This is well below the amounts advised for good health: The World Health Organization, the EAT-Lancet Commission, and many national guidelines recommend consumption of at least 400 grams of vegetables and fruit per person per day.

Daily food costs adds another dimension: vegetables are often more expensive per unit of recommended intake compared with staple grains. This affordability gap further discourages consumption, especially for low-income households, and reinforces grain-heavy diets.

2. Crop production: A global system built around cereal grains

The imbalance in what we eat reflects deeper imbalances in what we grow. Production value, Production quantity, and Harvested area are all skewed towards grains, predominantly carbohydrate-rich cereals like rice, wheat and maize – crops vital for global food security.

Production of these crops has shaped global agriculture accordingly: Decades of policy incentives, mechanisation, and trade patterns are oriented towards them; subsidies continue to favor them; irrigation systems are designed around them; and seed and fertilizer markets cater primarily to their large-scale production. Vegetables lack comparable support systems. Their production tends to be more labor-intensive, and the vegetables themselves more perishable – making them riskier for both farmers and investors.

Recognising the systemic orientation towards grains and the need for healthy, sustainable and just food systems, the Eat-Lancet Commission recently recommended increasing vegetable production by 42% by 2050. And it’s not a case of either-or: WorldVeg recently showed that there are likely to be multiple benefits of intercropping vegetables with grains, in Overcoming cereal fatigue.

3. Crop biodiversity: Vegetables are vastly underconserved

This is perhaps the most revealing part of the infographic. This domain shows Seed samples conserved and Seed samples shared via the genebanks of the world – vital repositories of crop diversity used by breeders, other researchers, and directly by farmers.

In each of the three petals, the green circles representing vegetables are notably small compared to grains. This resonates with long-standing warnings from crop diversity specialists that vegetables are among the least conserved and shared crops globally. This is despite vegetables being among the most nutritionally valuable foods – and, in the case of Traditional African Vegetables (TAVs) such as amaranth, jute mallow, okra, and African nightshade, resilient, nutrient-rich crops that thrive in heat and drought and offer farmers reliable growing options.

The petal representing Samples distributed under the Plant Treaty refers to seed flows facilitated by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Treaty supports international seed flows from genebanks, but many key vegetable species – including many TAVs – are excluded from its list of priority crops, This limits seed exchange, and potentially signals to funders and policymakers that vegetable conservation is a lower priority. The recently-launched Vegetables4Life initiative aims to strengthen the collection, conservation, and use of vegetable biodiversity more broadly, complementing ongoing efforts to expand the Treaty list to include more vegetables.

Fortunately, WorldVeg already conserves over 55,000 seed samples in its international genebank, and more than 10,000 seed samples of TAVs in Africa’s Vegetable Genebank – the WorldVeg-run facility in Arusha, Tanzania. As global public goods, these are freely accessible to all. Read about the recent landmark seed deposit by Africa’s Vegetable Genebank at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

4. Crop Research: A powerful engine running on insufficient fuel

The final domain shows that vegetable research is comparable to grains, in terms of Publications produced, Varieties released and Varieties registered. Encouragingly, this suggests that the research capacity, talent, and infrastructure for vegetable research are in place.

However, with limited genetic diversity available, research tends to concentrate on a narrow range of traits and species. Greater investment and improved access to germplasm would broaden the genetic base for vegetable breeding. This, in turn, would open the door to more research into underutilized vegetables, including TAVs.

A powerful visual – and a renewed call to act

And there you have it – one infographic that tells the story of vegetables from multiple angles, with a key takeaway: vegetables – with so much potential for supporting sustainable and healthy diets – are undervalued in multiple areas of the food system. It means that even with leading authorities repeatedly saying that vegetables are essential, the food system continues to behave as though they are optional.

Through sustained efforts to boost production, consumption, and policy support, WorldVeg’s new Global Strategy (2026–2033) positions vegetables as catalysts for climate resilience, healthier diets, economic opportunity, stronger urban food systems and more. The aim is clear: the more we elevate vegetables, the more healthy and resilient our food systems become, bringing us into line with what the authorities have long urged.