What Is Agrobiodiversity?
Agrobiodiversity — short for agricultural biodiversity — is all the living things that people use directly or indirectly for food and agriculture.
That means plants, animals and micro-organisms. It includes crop varieties and livestock breeds; and all the wild relatives of these domesticated species. It’s also the mycorrhizae, nitrogen-fixing symbionts and other soil biota that support them in agricultural landscapes; not to mention the micro-organisms that are used to prepare and process food. And pollinators, of course. There might even be a case for including the natural enemies of the pests and disease-causing organisms that attack the plants and animals that go into making our food. I’d even throw in cats and dogs, at a pinch.
Gut biomes? Well, maybe, though we do need to draw the line somewhere. But it’s perhaps worth saying that there’s increasing evidence that the microbiomes associated with agriculture, animals, processing and food are interconnected biological resources whose diversity and functions influence the resilience, productivity, safety and health of the entire agrifood system. New DNA sequencing and other omics technologies are making this diversity more visible and potentially manipulable. But we still know far less about how these microbial communities work than we would like.
Anyway: agrobiodiversity is all the living things that make farming, food, and indeed food security, possible. It’s what feeds us, what gives us many of life’s pleasures — think cats, curry, coffee and cognac — and to some extent still clothes us.
This page, and indeed this whole blog, are hopefully a starting point for understanding agrobiodiversity: what it covers, how it got to be like it is, what’s happening to it, and why it matters.
The Components of Agrobiodiversity
Agrobiodiversity operates at three levels:
Local knowledge and traditional farming practices are often considered part of agrobiodiversity too, since it’s human management, alongside “natural” evolutionary processes, that has shaped this diversity over millennia.
Why Agrobiodiversity Matters
Why Agrobiodiversity Is Declining
The twentieth century’s push toward high-yield, uniform varieties — the Green Revolution and its successors — dramatically increased agricultural output but narrowed the genetic base of global agriculture. Industrial agriculture, urbanization, market pressure toward a small number of commercial crops and varieties, and the disappearance of traditional farming knowledge have all contributed to ongoing loss of agrobiodiversity, or genetic erosion.
What can be done? Conservation responses to the loss of agrobiodiversity include:
But conservation is not enough. Conserved diversity needs to be readily available — to farmers, researchers, plant and animal breeders, and other users. And it must actually be used, as and when needed. That requires an adequate information and policy infrastructure. As well as capable, active and engaged users, who can readily find what they need, and get hold of it with as little friction as possible.
All this is widely recognized. There have been three International Biodiversity Congresses, after all, leading to:
But is issuing big proclamations every five years enough? Maybe something else is needed in between?
Keeping up to Date with Agrobiodiversity
The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog tracks ongoing developments in agrobiodiversity conservation, research, and policy, so you don’t have to. Recent coverage includes:
Explore the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog Archive
These are just a few of the more popular categories of posts:
Further Reading
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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 2006.