Seed biodiversity: The life insurance of our food production
27/05/2021
Five countries protecting and preserving food biodiversity for resilient agri-food systems
Humans rely on a shockingly low number of plants for the majority of our daily calories. In fact, of the thousands of fruit and vegetable species cultivated for food, fewer than 200 make up a substantial part of food produced globally. But what if climate change, invasive species, pollution, city sprawl or overuse of land cause these species to weaken, lowering their ability to produce or survive into the future? Thousands of plant species and varieties that fed our ancestors are already extinct, and we are losing more every day. Diversity is our food’s life insurance. It is crop biodiversity that keeps our food systems strong and resilient against these real and menacing threats.