The cornucopia, overflowing with fruits and vegetables, has long been a symbol of Thanksgiving, a day when tables across the country will be covered with a bounty of food — whether the traditional fare of turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberries and stuffing or newer menu items such as pomegranate-cranberry sauce, quinoa stuffing and spiced pumpkin and amaranth bread.

Despite what seems to be a plethora of food choices available in developed countries year round, the world is actually relying on fewer and fewer food crops. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reports (PDF) that while more than 10,000 plant species have been cultivated for food at some point, today we rely on about 90 plant crops (or fewer than 1 percent of potential food crops) for 90 percent of our global diet. In fact, for nearly 60 percent of all global food needs, the world relies (PDF) on a mere three crops: wheat, rice and corn — and of those, only a handful of high-yielding types are typically grown.

Our major crops have fed the masses for millennia and will undoubtedly continue to play important roles. But it is shortsighted to be reliant on so few crops: It increases our vulnerability to crop failures due to disease, drought or other unpredictable stresses that can lead to famine. Additionally, many major crops require tremendous energy input. Wheat, rice, corn and other major staples are annuals, which means they must be replanted every year. To achieve top yields, they require large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and irrigation and then must be shipped around the world to places that do not produce enough food locally. With more than 1 billion people suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition and considered food insecure, alternatives are needed.

Conversations about how to increase global food security — “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food,” according to the World Health Organization — often invoke the necessity of converting more land for agricultural use or eking out higher yields from our major crops through genetic modification or more petrochemicals and irrigation. But these approaches don’t work everywhere, and they bring with them more problems. Efforts should focus on agricultural diversification and the development of more locally adapted, low-energy-input crops that produce more food closer to where it will be consumed.

But where do we find such crops? We can start by going down the long list of underutilized crops that have been cultivated for food and consider if they can help.