Restoring agrobiodiversity is crucial to ensure resilient food systems
Today, just three plant species account for half of all plant-based food calories, and only four animal species account for the vast majority of meat supplies.
But for millennia, humankind’s food security and resilience were ensured by thousands of cultivated plant species, dozens of domesticated animal species, and the wider biodiversity from which they derive. With the expansion of industrial agriculture and globalized standardized food systems, this long-running agricultural biodiversity has fallen steeply.
It is imperative to safeguard the livelihoods of the “guardians of agrobiodiversity”: approximately 500 million small farms across the world – particularly those in the global South. The Swiss Academy of Sciences has published a fact-sheet that outlines causes and consequences of agrobiodiversity loss, areas of promise, and options for policy and research.
The fact-sheet is available in French, German and English.
Reference publication
Swiss Academy of Sciences (2020) Variety is the source of life: Agrobiodiversity benefits, challenges, and needs. Swiss Academies Factsheet 15 (1)
Source
http://www.akademien-schweiz.ch/en/index/Publikationen/Swiss-Academies-Factsheets.html