Organizations of smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and Local Communities (IPs and LCs) maintain most of the world’s remaining agrobiodiversity. They do so by designing and adopting strategies and tactics that foster diversity through traditional diets and knowledge that underpins seed conservation, agroecological farming approaches, and enterprises targeting multiple markets. While their diverse landscapes are often more productive per unit area than large-scale industrial monocultures, these guardians of the world’s agrobiodiversity face significant challenges – not least in competing for resource rights, technical support, and cost-competitiveness with large-scale industrial monocultures.

Focusing on FFPOs from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the conference aims to address common challenges in maintaining agrobiodiversity and adapt models to benefit members’ livelihoods. It also strives to strengthen collaboration between FFPOs and governmental institutions, the private sector, finance institutions, and other stakeholders to promote agrobiodiversity within the forest and farm value chains. Lastly, the conference aims to create a knowledge base developed and owned by FFPOs, mainstreaming gender and youth concerns and incorporating indigenous and traditional knowledge into the discourse.

Specifically, the conference will lead to:

• Documented cases of good practices and tactics that sustain agrobiodiversity from FFPO and IPLC groups from which lessons can be learned
• Agreed actions to expand the co-production of knowledge on agrobiodiversity management in different contexts
• Agreed actions to promote the diversification of seed sources that sustain options for agrobiodiversity
• Agreed actions to pilot and upscale innovative business and financial models that incentivise agrobiodiversity conservation rather than diminish it.