Food security and climate change: The answer is biodiversity - A review of scientific publications on climate change adaptation in agriculture

Climate change will profoundly affect agriculture worldwide. Food security in many countries is under threat from unpredictable changes in rainfall and more frequent extreme weather. Farmers in poorer countries with harsh climate conditions will likely be most affected. A review of recent scientific literature underlines that the most effective strategy to adapt agriculture to climate change is to increase biodiversity. A mix of different crops and varieties in one field is a proven and highly reliable farming method to increase resilience to erratic weather changes. And, the best ways to increase stress tolerance in single varieties are modern breeding technologies that do not entail genetic engineering, such as Marker Assisted Selection. In contrast, there is no evidence that genetically engineered (GE) plants can ever play any role to increase food security in a changing climate.