My grandmother used to say you could tell how healthy food was by how weird it looked. “Perfect vegetables are suspicious,” she’d declare, eyeing the uniform carrots in supermarkets with profound distrust. Gran would have absolutely loved the gnarly, misshapen, dirt-encrusted Kernza root I’m currently examining in a research field outside Bristol. It looks like something you’d find in a fantasy novel—part plant, part mysterious creature, entirely fascinating.
I’m here with Dr. Amara Singh, a crop scientist who’s spent the last decade studying perennial grains, and she’s just handed me what might be the future of our food system. “This root system goes down nearly ten feet,” she tells me with the unmistakable enthusiasm of someone who’s found her life’s passion. “Annual wheat roots typically reach about two feet at most. The difference in terms of soil health, carbon sequestration, and water retention is extraordinary.”
Kernza isn’t a household name yet, but it represents a revolution in how we might grow our food in a climate-challenged future. Unlike annual wheat, which needs replanting every year (with all the soil disturbance and carbon release that entails), Kernza is a perennial grain that can produce for up to four years from a single planting. Its massive root system holds soil in place, prevents erosion, sequesters significant carbon, and reaches water that annual crops simply can’t access during droughts.
I’ll admit it—five years ago, I would have glazed over at this information. My environmental focus was firmly on reducing plastics, fossil fuels, and meat consumption. But as climate change has accelerated and extreme weather has battered our food systems, I’ve become increasingly obsessed with the question of how we’ll feed ourselves on this hotter, drier, stormier planet. And the answers are often found in overlooked or undervalued crops that do more than just feed us—they actively heal landscapes while thriving in conditions that would kill conventional varieties.
My journey into climate-friendly superfoods began accidentally, during a devastating summer heat wave that turned my carefully-tended vegetable garden into what looked like a prop from a post-apocalyptic film. While my precious tomatoes withered despite constant watering, I noticed something peculiar: the purslane I’d been battling as a weed was thriving. Not just surviving—positively flourishing in the scorching heat.
Curious, I researched this apparently indestructible plant and discovered it’s not just tough—it’s a nutritional powerhouse containing more omega-3 fatty acids than many fish oils, along with impressive levels of vitamins A and C, magnesium, calcium, and potassium. It also happens to be delicious in salads with a pleasant, slightly lemony crunch. I’d been ruthlessly pulling up a superfood that was perfectly adapted to our changing climate.
This revelation sent me down a rabbit hole of discovery about other underappreciated climate-resilient foods. I became that person at dinner parties who can’t stop talking about regenerative agriculture and obscure grains. “Have you tried amaranth?” I’d ask innocent friends who just wanted to enjoy their pasta in peace. “It’s drought-resistant, captures carbon, and contains all nine essential amino acids!” I’ve lost a few dinner invitations, but gained a whole new perspective on our food system.
What makes a food “climate-friendly” isn’t just its carbon footprint during production, though that’s important. The true champions are crops that actively improve their environment—building soil health, sequestering carbon, conserving water, and increasing biodiversity—while also delivering exceptional nutrition and adapting to changing weather patterns. They’re the multitaskers of the plant world.
Take legumes like cowpeas, pigeon peas, and certain varieties of beans. Beyond their impressive protein content, they perform the neat trick of fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil, reducing or eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers (which are major greenhouse gas contributors). During a visit to a regenerative farm in Devon last summer, I watched the farmer, Elena, dig up a cowpea plant and show me the little nodules on its roots where nitrogen fixation occurs. “Each of these is a tiny fertilizer factory,” she explained, “and they work for free.”
Elena’s farm has transformed over seven years from requiring regular inputs to being almost entirely self-sustaining through clever use of climate-friendly crops in rotation. The economics are compelling too. “I spend about 60% less on inputs than neighboring conventional farms,” she told me as we walked among her diverse plantings, “and my yields are more stable during extreme weather because the soil can hold more water during droughts and drain better during floods.”
Water resilience is becoming a crucial feature as rainfall patterns grow increasingly erratic. Crops like millet, sorghum, and teff—ancient grains that remain dietary staples across parts of Africa and Asia—require significantly less water than conventional wheat, corn, or rice. They can produce nutritious harvests in conditions that would mean total crop failure for most commercial varieties.
I’ve been experimenting with these grains in my own cooking, with admittedly mixed results. My first attempt at injera, the Ethiopian sourdough flatbread made from teff, produced something closer to a rubbery frisbee than an edible bread. But practice makes perfect, and I’ve gradually developed a decent repertoire of climate-friendly recipes. My millet and roasted vegetable salad has even achieved “bring that one” status at potlucks, which I consider the highest culinary compliment.
Beyond their resilience, many of these crops are carbon sequestration champions. The Land Institute in Kansas has found that perennial grain fields can sequester up to 20 times more carbon than annual crops because of their extensive root systems and minimal soil disturbance. When you consider that soils represent the second largest carbon sink after oceans, the potential impact of shifting even a portion of our grain production to perennials like Kernza becomes enormously significant.
It’s not just obscure or ancient crops that offer climate benefits. Researchers are developing climate-friendly versions of familiar foods too. At the Crop Wild Relatives Project, scientists are crossing modern crop varieties with their wild cousins to introduce resilience traits that were bred out during conventional agriculture’s focus on yield and uniformity above all else.
Dr. Maria Kotova, who leads their potato research, showed me experimental varieties that can thrive with 40% less water than commercial potatoes. “Wild potato relatives grow in some of Earth’s most challenging environments, from high altitudes to desert margins,” she explained as we examined plants in her greenhouse. “They’ve evolved incredible adaptations over millions of years—drought tolerance, disease resistance, cold hardiness. We’re essentially borrowing these traits through breeding.”
The resulting potatoes might not win beauty contests—they’re smaller and more irregularly shaped than the uniform tubers we’re accustomed to seeing in stores—but they require fewer inputs, withstand harsher conditions, and often contain higher levels of micronutrients. My grandmother would approve.
Then there are the truly multifunctional crops like moringa, sometimes called the “miracle tree.” Native to parts of Africa and Asia, it grows rapidly even in poor soil, requires minimal water, and produces nutritionally dense leaves containing all nine essential amino acids, plus high levels of vitamins A, C, and minerals. The seeds can even be used to purify water. When I finally managed to find moringa powder at a local international food store, I added it to smoothies for a nutrient boost. The taste is…distinctive. “Grassy with hints of horseradish” is my generous description. But blended with banana and a bit of ginger, it’s quite pleasant.
Seaweeds represent another frontier in climate-friendly foods. They require no fresh water, no fertilizer, no land, and actually absorb excess nutrients and carbon dioxide from seawater as they grow. Species like dulse and kelp contain more iron than spinach, more calcium than milk, and significant amounts of iodine and omega-3 fatty acids. After overcoming my initial skepticism (and a disastrous attempt at homemade seaweed salad that my friend James politely described as “reminiscent of aquarium cleaning day”), I’ve found that toasting dulse flakes transforms them into something remarkably bacon-like that adds umami depth to everything from scrambled eggs to roasted vegetables.
What’s particularly exciting about many climate-friendly crops is their potential for scaling. Perennial agriculture isn’t just for small specialty farms—companies like Patagonia Provisions are already using Kernza in commercial products, and researchers are working on developing perennial varieties of rice, sorghum, and sunflowers with commercial potential. General Mills has invested in Kernza research, recognizing both its environmental benefits and its potential market value as climate-conscious consumption grows.
But the true scaling potential might lie in diversification rather than replacement. Our current food system relies heavily on a shockingly small number of crops—just three (wheat, rice, and corn) provide nearly 60% of the world’s plant-derived calories. This lack of diversity creates enormous vulnerability to climate disruptions, pests, and diseases. Integrating climate-friendly crops expands our food security portfolio while providing environmental benefits.
During my research, I’ve repeatedly encountered the same pattern: what’s beneficial for climate resilience often brings multiple other benefits—nutrition, flavor diversity, ecosystem services, farmer independence, and cultural preservation. Many climate-friendly crops have deep roots in traditional food systems that were displaced by industrial agriculture’s focus on a limited number of high-yield varieties.
Last week, I visited a community garden in East Bristol where residents from diverse backgrounds are growing drought-resistant crops from their cultural traditions—Jamaican callaloo, Pakistani amaranth, Ethiopian teff. Amina, who coordinates the garden, told me: “These plants know how to handle tough conditions because they evolved in places that already experienced the kind of climate challenges we’re now facing in Britain. Our grandparents’ food wisdom turns out to be climate wisdom too.”
That connection between traditional knowledge and climate adaptation keeps emerging in my conversations with farmers, researchers, and food producers working in this space. It’s a reminder that innovation doesn’t always mean creating something entirely new—sometimes it means rediscovering what we’ve lost or overlooked.
I’m under no illusion that switching to climate-friendly superfoods alone will solve our environmental crisis. System-wide changes in how we produce, distribute, and value food are essential. But as Dr. Singh told me while we examined that remarkable Kernza root system, “The beauty of food is that it’s both deeply personal and globally significant. Every meal is a choice that connects to larger systems.”
As I left the research field that day, Dr. Singh handed me a small bag of Kernza flour. “Try it in pancakes,” she suggested. “The nutty flavor is wonderful.” That weekend, I made Kernza pancakes for breakfast and served them to my visiting parents. Dad, always suspicious of my “weird health food phases,” took a reluctant bite before conceding they were delicious. I didn’t launch into my prepared speech about root systems and carbon sequestration—sometimes taste is the most persuasive argument of all.
And perhaps that’s the most hopeful aspect of climate-friendly foods: they can satisfy our need for both personal pleasure and planetary purpose. They remind us that what’s good for the Earth can also be good for our taste buds and our bodies. My kitchen now contains jars of odd-looking grains, seeds, and powders that would have been completely unfamiliar to me a few years ago. Some were more successful experiments than others (the chickpea miso is aging nicely; the fermented perennial wheat disaster of 2023 shall not be discussed). But each represents a small step toward a more resilient food future—one peculiar, climate-friendly superfood at a time.
