Agricultural biodiversity, also called agrobiodiversity, is the foundation of our global food systems. It encompasses the wide variety of plants, animals, and microorganisms used for food and agriculture, as well as the ecosystems they form. This biodiversity exists on three levels: geneticdiversity (within species), species diversity (among species), and ecosystem diversity (amongenvironments).
Protecting and promoting this diversity is critical, not just for food production, but for the health of our environment, the sustainability of farming practices, and the resilience of communities in the face of climate change.
What Is Agricultural Biodiversity and Why It Matters
Agricultural biodiversity includes all the components of biological diversity relevant to food and agriculture. This spans everything from cultivated crops and domesticated animals to wild relatives, soil organisms, and pollinators. These components interact within ecosystems and farming systems to support productivity, adaptation, and ecological stability.
The biodiversity that supports food and agriculture plays an essential role in:
• Ensuring global food security
• Enabling nutritionally balanced diets
• Supporting ecosystem services such as pollination and soil fertility
• Providing resilience against pests, diseases, and environmental change
Without this rich variety of life, food systems become more uniform, more vulnerable, and lesscapable of adapting to future challenges.
The Alarming Decline in Agricultural Biodiversity
In recent decades, the current model of industrial food production has led to an alarming loss of biodiversity across the globe. Among the main drivers of this decline are:
• Deforestation and land clearing
• The expansion of monocultures and standardized livestock systems
• Overreliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers
• Rapid urban development
• The introduction of invasive species
• Accelerating climate change
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 75% of the world’s cropgenetic diversity was lost during the 20th century. Today, just 12 plant species and 5 animalspecies make up roughly two-thirds of global food consumption.
This dangerous narrowing of our genetic food base makes global agriculture more fragile and lesscapable of responding to shocks, such as extreme weather events, new crop diseases, or market disruptions.
Real-World Examples: Maize and Rice
Let’s look at two staple crops, maize and rice, to understand what biodiversity loss really means in practice.
• Maize (corn) has over 20,000 known varieties, adapted to different climates, soils, and altitudes. Yet industrial agriculture uses only a small fraction of these, focusing on hybrid or genetically modified varieties optimized for high yields in uniform conditions.
• Rice is even more diverse, with nearly 100,000 varieties grown or preserved around the world. Most of these are conserved by small-scale farmers and seed banks, not used in industrial food systems.
This dramatic reduction in used varieties, a process known as genetic erosion, puts global food security at risk and threatens our ability to respond to changing environmental conditions.
Economic and Environmental Value of Biodiversity
Beyond ecological importance, agricultural biodiversity has a massive economic value—bothdirect and indirect.
A 2017 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that insect pollination alone contributes between $235 and $577 billion per year to global food production. Other services, such as natural pest control, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, and water purification, are equally invaluable.
Meanwhile, indigenous seeds and heritage livestock breeds, often neglected by modernagribusiness, hold genetic traits that make them more resilient to drought, disease, or pests. These traits are vital for developing climate-resilient agriculture in the coming decades.
However, because many of these assets lie outside conventional markets, they remainundervalued, underused, and underprotected.
The Role of Farmers’ Markets in Protecting Biodiversity
One of the most effective ways to preserve agricultural biodiversity is to support local food systems and especially farmers markets.
Farmers markets create a direct connection between producers and consumers. They offer space for:
• Traditional and heirloom crop varieties
• Organic and sustainable products
• Animal breeds not found in supermarkets
• Seasonal and regionally adapted foods
By shopping at these markets, consumers actively contribute to preserving local food traditionsand seed diversity, while also supporting small-scale farmers and rural economies.
The World Farmers Markets Coalition (WorldFMC) highlights the importance of this model. Their approach champions the use of local biodiversity to fight poverty, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. In contrast, the homogenized systems promoted by industrial agriculture often benefit only a few large players, while undermining community resilience and ecological health.
Global Consequences of Local Loss
In our interconnected world, biodiversity loss is never isolated. Losing a single apple variety in Spain might seem trivial, but it could mean the disappearance of specific disease resistance traits or flavor profiles. These traits may one day be crucial for breeding future apple varieties in other parts of the world.
As biodiversity continues to erode at all levels, genetic, species, and ecosystem, our food systems become more fragile and more prone to systemic collapse under stress.
How to Safeguard Agricultural Biodiversity
Protecting biodiversity requires action from multiple fronts, scientists, farmers, policymakers, and consumers alike. Here are some ways we can all help:
• Promote and support seed-saving initiatives
• Choose locally grown, seasonal, and diverse foods
• Reduce reliance on industrial monocultures
• Support policies that protect agroecological practices
• Invest in education and community-led conservation
Consumers have a powerful role. By valuing variety on their plates, they send a signal to markets and governments to do the same in fields and farms.
