Staggering Statistic: The Four Most Common Crops

Walking through a farmers market or grocery store, the varieties of produce can seem endless. With five varieties of apples, multiple kinds of lettuce, and countless seasonal vegetables to choose from, it’s easy to forget that most of the world doesn’t live like this.

So how would you react to knowing that this isn’t the norm for most of the world?

Just four of the more than 30,000 edible plants provide 60 percent of the world’s energy intake, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Those four plants? Corn, wheat, rice and potatoes.

Photo credit: Pockafwye via Flickr