Agricultural biodiversity can contribute to food security and livelihood security

Environmental conservation is never conservation minus enhancement of Biodiversity. This basically refers to the richness of life and it can be looked at different levels – genetic, species, niche, habitat all the way to the ecosystem level.

As young farmers we can as well contribute to this by enhancing Agricultural diversity in our agro systems. In this case we consider Agricultural biodiversity as a sub-set of general biodiversity and look at all forms of life directly relevant to agriculture: rare seed varieties and animal breeds (farm biodiversity), and also many other organisms such as soil fauna, weeds, pests, predators, and all of the native plants and animals (wild biodiversity) existing on and flowing through the farm.

Together, these varieties represent high levels of genetic diversity and are therefore the focus of most crop genetic resources conservation efforts. Agricultural biodiversity is the basis of our agricultural food chain, developed and safeguarded by farmers, livestock breeders, forest workers, fishermen and indigenous peoples throughout the world. The use of agricultural biodiversity (as opposed to non diverse production methods) can contribute to food security and livelihood security.

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