A new FAO policy brief analyses how the 78 revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) submitted to the CBD as of February 2026 treat agrifood systems.
The headline numbers: All 78 NBSAPs that were looked at include agrifood-related targets and actions: 63% of all national targets are implemented through agrifood-related actions, and 36% of all planned actions (4,381 of 12,332) relate to agrifood systems. I think that’s pretty good. Togo tops the list with 80% of its actions being agrifood-related, built around agroecology, sustainable forest management and genetic resource use.
The genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA) angle: Of the 55-item typology of agrifood actions tracked, sustainable use of GRFA appears in 74% of NBSAPs and conservation of GRFA in 70%, so both are relatively well covered. But two other pieces of the puzzle lag: inventory and characterization of GRFA sits at only 49%, and access and benefit-sharing of GRFA at 48%. So countries seem to be readier to commit to using and conserving genetic resources than to the maybe less glamorous work of cataloguing what they have or sorting out benefit-sharing arrangements.
The report’s six policy recommendations essentially argue for turning these paper commitments into funded, monitored action, particularly flagging aquaculture, agroecology, rights-based governance, and finance as areas needing a bit of a push.
This is a genuinely thorough policy analysis: 78 NBSAPs coded against a 55-item action typology is real work. But to me it was a little frustrating that twelve pages on agrifood systems never get to grips with the infrastructure that actually keeps agricultural biodiversity — the foundation of healthy agrifood system — alive. Protected areas are mentioned, but there’s nothing specifically on national or international genebanks or on-farm conservation; no Plant Treaty and its access and benefit-sharing system either. I can’t believe none of these were mentioned in the NBSAPs. Conservation and sustainable use of GRFA end up as generic line items in a typology, without much sense of what “conservation” looks like in practice, or who’s actually doing the inventorying that only half of countries have committed to.
It’s solid policy-text analysis, but it stays resolutely, almost defiantly, high-level. It’s a report on commitments on biodiversity in and for agriculture that doesn’t recognize that at least for crop diversity, a global genebank system is being built to help carry them out. Seems a pity.