What Is Agrobiodiversity?
Agrobiodiversity — short for agricultural biodiversity — is the variety and variability of animals, plants, and micro-organisms used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture. It includes crop varieties, livestock breeds, fish species, and their wild relatives; and also the pollinators and soil organisms that interact with them, and the micro-organisms that people use to prepare and process food. In short: it’s the living diversity that makes farming, and food security, possible.
This page is a starting point for understanding agrobiodiversity: what it covers, why it’s disappearing, and why it matters.
The Components of Agrobiodiversity
Agrobiodiversity operates at three levels:
Genetic diversity — the variation within a single crop or livestock species, such as the tens of thousands of traditional rice varieties once grown across Asia, the thousands of heritage apple varieties preserved in orchards and genebanks, and the hundreds of cattle breeds reared around the world.
Species diversity — the range of different crops, livestock, and other organisms used across a farming system, from staple grains to underutilized crops to wild harvested plants to domesticated animals to different pollinators.
Ecosystem diversity — the variety of agro-ecosystems themselves: paddies, agroforestry systems, pastoral rangelands, and everything in between.
Local knowledge and traditional farming practices are often considered part of agrobiodiversity too, since it’s human management, alongside natural selection, that has shaped this diversity over millennia.
Why Agrobiodiversity Matters
Food security and resilience. Diverse farming systems are more resilient to pests, disease, and climate shocks than monocultures. A single blight can devastate a genetically uniform crop; a diverse one is far less vulnerable.
Climate adaptation. Agrobiodiverse systems buffer climate extremes, reduce soil degradation, and often require fewer chemical inputs, since natural processes (like composting, pest control) do more of the work.
Nutrition. A wider range of species and varieties supports more varied, nutrient-rich diets.
Cultural and economic value. Many traditional varieties and breeds are tied to local knowledge systems, cuisines, and livelihoods that may disappear along with the diversity itself.
Why Agrobiodiversity Is Declining
The twentieth century’s push toward high-yield, uniform varieties — the Green Revolution and its successors — dramatically increased output but narrowed the genetic base of global agriculture. Industrial agriculture, urbanization, market pressure toward a small number of commercial varieties, and the erosion of traditional farming knowledge have all contributed to ongoing loss of crop and livestock diversity.
Conservation responses include:
Genebanks, preserving the diversity of crops like rice, apples, and coffee as seed, adult plants or tissue culture.
In situ conservation, where farmers continue growing traditional varieties in the landscapes they evolved in.
Agrobiodiversity in the News
The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog tracks ongoing developments in agrobiodiversity conservation, research, and policy. Recent coverage includes:
Brainfood: Weekly summaries of the literature.
Nibbles: Roundups of agrobiodiversity news every few days.
A brief history of gap analysis for crop diversity conservation.
Further Reading
FAO: What is Agrobiodiversity?
Wikipedia: Agricultural Biodiversity
Crop Trust: The Power and Potential of Agrobiodiversity
Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT: Agrobiodiversity Index
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This page is maintained as a living reference by the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, which has covered agrobiodiversity news, research, and conservation efforts since 2007.