How Agrobiodiversity Contributes to Global Food Security and Nutrition

Hunger remains one of the most persistent challenges of our time. Despite decades of agricultural advancements, hundreds of millions of people still lack reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. At the heart of this crisis lies a paradox: the very diversity of crops and livestock that once sustained human civilizations is rapidly disappearing. Agrobiodiversity – the variety of plants, animals, and microorganisms used in food and agriculture – is a critical but often overlooked pillar of global food security. Understanding how this diversity supports food systems is essential for building a future where everyone can eat well.

The scale of global food insecurity 🔗

Food insecurity is not a relic of the past. According to the FAO Statistical Yearbook 2024, between 713 and 757 million people were undernourished in 2023 – roughly 152 million more than in 2019. The majority of undernourished people live in Asia, though the prevalence of hunger is highest in Africa. Meanwhile, obesity rates are climbing in high-income regions, highlighting a dual burden of malnutrition.

The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as a state where all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Achieving this goal requires more than just producing enough calories – it demands diversity, resilience, and equitable access across the food system.

The three pillars of food security 🔗

Food security rests on three core determinants, each of which is deeply connected to agrobiodiversity.

Availability 🔗

Availability refers to having enough food produced and supplied at the right time and in the right place. This depends on productive agricultural systems that can withstand climatic shocks, pest outbreaks, and soil degradation. When farming systems rely on diverse crops and livestock, they are better equipped to maintain stable outputs even under adverse conditions. A CSIS analysis notes that increased country-wide crop species diversity significantly reduces the probability of harvest failure, making diversification one of the most effective tools for stabilizing agricultural production.

Access 🔗

Access means that people can actually obtain available food – through purchase, trade, or their own production. Even when food is abundant in aggregate, poverty and inequality can leave millions unable to afford nutritious diets. According to FAO data, approximately 2.8 billion people worldwide cannot afford the least expensive healthy diet. Agrobiodiversity supports access by enabling smallholder farmers – who make up about 84% of all farms globally – to grow a range of crops suited to local conditions, reducing their dependence on expensive external inputs and volatile markets.

Utilization 🔗

Utilization encompasses how food is stored, processed, prepared, and combined to deliver balanced nutrition. A diet relying on just one or two staples may fill stomachs but often fails to deliver the micronutrients – vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids – that the body needs. Diverse diets sourced from biodiverse farming systems directly address this gap.

A dangerously narrow food base 🔗

Humans have historically used an extraordinary range of species for food. At least 40,000 species of plants and animals have been utilized at various points. Yet today, the global food system depends on a startlingly small number of them. As Welthungerhilfe reports, out of roughly 6,000 plant species ever cultivated as food, just nine crops – including sugarcane, wheat, rice, maize, and potatoes – now account for about 66% of total global crop production. Similarly, just eight livestock species supply 97% of the world’s meat.

This concentration is even more extreme at the caloric level. Rice, wheat, and maize alone contribute approximately two-thirds of all food energy consumed by humans. The Agrobiodiversity Index study published in Nature Food found that agrobiodiversity commitment scores across 80 countries averaged just 21.4 out of 100, indicating that governments are doing far too little to promote crop and livestock diversity within their food systems.

This narrow reliance creates a dangerous vulnerability. When a single disease, pest, or climate event strikes a dominant crop, the consequences ripple through entire food systems. The 1970 Southern Corn Leaf Blight in the United States destroyed about 15% of the maize crop in one season – a stark reminder of what genetic uniformity can cost.

The Green Revolution: gains and trade-offs 🔗

The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s transformed global agriculture. By introducing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, along with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, it dramatically boosted food production and is credited with averting widespread famine. According to a 2021 study, a delay of just ten years in adopting Green Revolution technologies would have cost developing countries about 17% of their GDP per capita.

However, these gains came with significant trade-offs. As Kew Gardens highlights, the Green Revolution accelerated genetic erosion by encouraging farmers worldwide to abandon locally adapted landraces in favour of a handful of high-yielding varieties. Selective breeding for traits like yield and short stature meant that genes conferring nutritional quality, pest resistance, or drought tolerance were often lost in the process.

The impact was especially severe in regions like India, where research published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods documents that over 100,000 indigenous rice varieties were lost after the 1970s. Millet and sorghum production declined sharply as government subsidies and policies favoured wheat and rice monocultures. Crops that had fed communities for centuries were reduced to animal fodder within just a few decades.

Regions left behind 🔗

The Green Revolution did not benefit all regions equally. Areas with challenging environments – deserts, mountains, flood-prone lowlands – often saw minimal yield improvements because the new varieties were bred for ideal conditions with ample water and fertile soils. In these marginal zones, local plant varieties and indigenous animal breeds that had evolved over millennia to cope with harsh conditions continued to provide far more reliable food security than any imported high-yielding variety. For farmers in arid parts of sub-Saharan Africa or the high-altitude regions of the Andes, agrobiodiversity was – and remains – a lifeline, not a luxury.

Agrobiodiversity as a tool for nutritional security 🔗

Food security is not just about calories. Micronutrient deficiencies – often called “hidden hunger” – affect roughly one-third of the global population, contributing to stunted growth, weakened immunity, and cognitive impairment. A diet dominated by just rice or wheat may provide energy but fails to deliver the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals the body requires.

This is where agrobiodiversity becomes indispensable. Diverse farming systems produce a wider range of foods – leafy greens, legumes, fruits, tubers, and animal products – that together deliver balanced nutrition. Research from the CSIS report confirms that at the global scale, increased crop diversity results in higher nutritional stability, helping ensure that essential nutrients remain available even when individual harvests are disrupted.

The power of home gardens 🔗

One of the most promising and overlooked strategies for improving nutrition is the home garden. Typically managed by women, these small plots around households often contain a remarkably rich diversity of crops – vegetables, herbs, fruits, and medicinal plants – that are used directly in family cooking. A cluster-randomized trial in rural Tanzania found that women who received training and inputs for home gardens consumed significantly more food groups per day and were 14 percentage points more likely to achieve adequate dietary diversity compared to a control group.

Studies from West Africa reinforce this pattern. Research on home gardens in Benin found that women owned the majority of food-focused home gardens and that these gardens contributed meaningfully to the conservation of crop diversity and crop wild relatives. The diversity of crop species was notably higher in gardens managed by women compared to those managed by men.

Home gardens serve a dual purpose: they improve household nutrition by providing direct access to micronutrient-rich foods, and they act as reservoirs of agrobiodiversity, preserving crop varieties that might otherwise disappear from commercial farming systems. Supporting and scaling these gardens – particularly in rural and periurban poor communities – represents a cost-effective strategy for tackling malnutrition from the ground up.

Why diversity is resilience 🔗

Climate change is intensifying the threats facing global agriculture. Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and more frequent extreme weather events are already reducing yields in vulnerable regions. By 2050, global food demand is projected to grow by more than 50% due to population growth and changing diets. Meeting this demand while the climate becomes more hostile requires agricultural systems that can adapt – and adaptation requires genetic diversity.

Locally adapted crop varieties carry genetic traits forged over centuries of natural and human selection. Some can tolerate drought; others resist specific pests or thrive in poor soils. These traits represent an enormous, largely untapped resource for crop breeders working to develop varieties suited to future conditions. Without preserving this genetic diversity – both on farms and in seed banks – we lose the raw material needed for agricultural adaptation.

The FAO has documented that more than 90% of crop varieties have disappeared from farmers’ fields and half the breeds of many domestic animals have been lost. This genetic erosion is not just an ecological concern – it is a direct threat to the long-term capacity of agriculture to feed the world.

A path forward: integrating agrobiodiversity into food policy 🔗

Reversing agrobiodiversity loss and strengthening food security will require coordinated action across multiple fronts. Governments need to integrate agrobiodiversity goals into national agricultural and nutrition policies, moving beyond a narrow focus on yield maximization. Support for smallholder farmers who maintain diverse cropping systems – through subsidies, extension services, and market access – is essential.

Conservation efforts must operate at two levels. On-farm (in situ) conservation keeps traditional varieties alive in the environments where they evolved, maintained by the farmers who understand them best. Off-farm (ex situ) conservation in gene banks and seed vaults provides a safety net, storing genetic material for future breeding and research. Both approaches are complementary and necessary.

Equally important is investing in nutrition-sensitive agriculture – programs that explicitly connect food production to dietary quality. Home garden initiatives, school feeding programs sourcing local diverse crops, and public procurement policies that favour diverse produce can all shift food systems toward better nutritional outcomes.

Consumers, too, play a role. Choosing locally grown, diverse foods over homogenized industrial products sends market signals that reward agrobiodiversity. Every purchase of a traditional grain, a heritage vegetable, or a locally bred livestock product helps keep that diversity alive.

What do you think? Can we realistically shift global food systems away from dependence on just a handful of crops, or is the economic pressure toward uniformity too strong? How might supporting women-managed home gardens in your region contribute to both nutrition and biodiversity conservation?

References

1. https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/fao-statistical-yearbook-2024-reveals-critical-insights-on-the-sustainability-of-agriculture-food-security-and-the-importance-of-agrifood-in-employment/en
2. https://www.csis.org/analysis/seeding-security-why-agrobiodiversity-loss-threatens-national-security
3. https://www.welthungerhilfe.org/news/latest-articles/2021/the-loss-of-biodiversity-threatens-world-food-security
4. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00344-3
5. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/back-to-the-future-green-revolution
6. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42779-019-0011-9
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7988851/
8. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5702203/
9. https://www.fao.org/4/y5609e/y5609e02.htm