Biodiversity provides essential components of healthy environments and sustainable livelihoods. One key component of biodiversity is agrobiodiversity — that is, the cultivated plants and animals that form the raw material of agriculture, the wild foods and other products gathered by rural populations within traditional subsistence systems and organisms such as pollinators and soil biota.
Farming systems rich in agrobiodiversity are characterised by a range of crops, many of which may be represented by numerous traditional varieties even in the same field. Agrobiodiverse systems tend to comprise smaller quantities of multiple species for culinary, medicinal and cultural uses. They often tolerate or encourage valuable wild plants within fields, on field margins and in adjacent natural areas.
Before the emergence of modern industrial agriculture, farms everywhere were richer in biodiversity than they are today. Agrobiodiverse systems now tend to be found more in developing countries, among indigenous communities and small-scale farmers and in extreme or marginal environments. Economic and social development often leads people to abandon these valuable assets, thus preventing agrobiodiversity from contributing to improving the health and livelihoods of disadvantaged populations.
