- Small farms contribute a third of the food consumed in high-income nations. And those small farms are disproportionately diverse…
- The Global Spatial Co-Variation Between Crop Diversity and Landscape Heterogeneity. …and crop diversity on farms goes with landscape diversity.
- Beyond Crop Hotspots: Why Overlooked Marginal Agricultural Lands Deserve Urgent Attention. I’m willing to bet landscape diversity is often associated with marginality, but that’s not the end of the world.
- Food Biodiversity and its Association with Diet Quality and Health Outcomes-A Scoping Review. Why should we care about diverse farms? Because diversity in your food is associated with nutritional adequacy, a reduced risk of mortality, or a reduced risk of gastrointestinal cancers. Ok, I know, I missed a step there. There was nothing in the past few weeks in the literature specifically linking farm diversity and food diversity, but you know the link is there. At least sometimes.
- Long-term agricultural diversification increases financial profitability, biodiversity, and ecosystem services: a second-order meta-analysis. Diversity on farms is not just good for (ok, maybe) diets.
- Global evidence that plant diversity suppresses pests and promotes plant performance and crop production. Another way farm diversity is useful is via pest control. Well, actually, this could count as an ecosystem service, and so an example of the above.
- Ecological drivers of intercropping performance for enhanced global crop production. Ah, that explains how those farm ecosystem services actually works.
- Crop rotations synergize yield, nutrition, and revenue: a meta-analysis. Rotations are diversification too, and good for you too.
- Revitalizing orphan crops to combat food insecurity. But of course the diversification strategy de jour is opportunity crops.
- Value chain research and development: The quest for impact. And for that revolution to happen, we’ll need a better grip on value chains.
- Cultural innovation can increase and maintain biodiversity: A case study from medieval Europe. Yes, agricultural revolution can lead to increased biodiversity.
- Household vegetable agro-biodiversity in northern Vietnam requires diversity in seed sources. Any revolution is going to need good sources of good seeds though.
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