Agrobiodiversity provides most of our food through our interaction with crops and domestic animals. Future global food security is firmly anchored in sound, science-based management of agrobiodiversity. This book presents key concepts of agrobiodiversity management, critically reviewing important current and emerging issues including agricultural development, crop introduction, practical diversity in farming systems, impact of modern crop varieties and GM crops, conservation, climate change, food sovereignty and policies. It will also address claims and misinformation in the subject based on sound scientific principles.

Describes how farmers manage, maintain, and benefit from biodiversity in agricultural production systems. Includes the most recent research and developments in the maintenance of local diversity at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels.

Experts discuss the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and conservation, integrating disciplines that range from plant and biological sciences to economics and political science. Wide-ranging environmental phenomena—including climate change, extreme weather events, and soil and water availability—combine with such socioeconomic factors as food policies, dietary preferences, and market forces to affect agriculture and food production systems on local, national, and global scales. The increasing simplification of food systems, the continuing decline of plant species, and the ongoing spread of pests and disease threaten biodiversity in agriculture as well as the sustainability of food resources. Complicating the situation further, the multiple systems involved—cultural, economic, environmental, institutional, and technological—are driven by human decision making, which is inevitably informed by diverse knowledge systems. The interactions and linkages that emerge necessitate an integrated assessment if we are to make progress toward sustainable agriculture and food systems. This volume in the Strüngmann Forum Reports series offers insights into the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and sustainability and proposes an integrative framework to guide future research, scholarship, policy, and practice. The contributors offer perspectives from a range of disciplines, including plant and biological sciences, food systems and nutrition, ecology, economics, plant and animal breeding, anthropology, political science, geography, law, and sociology. Topics covered include evolutionary ecology, food and human health, the governance of agrobiodiversity, and the interactions between agrobiodiversity and climate and demographic change.

Farmers play a crucial role in the preservation and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity. In fact, the diversity of species that support our current agricultural production systems has been carefully managed and shaped by farming communities, over the course of the history of humankind. Farmers act as custodian of the Earth’s agrobiodiversity resources, and play a big part in preserving traditional plant and animal varieties, and the knowledge associated with these. FAO has long been working on promoting approaches to agriculture that enable both the sustainable use of biodiversity resources for food and agriculture, and their conservation, and on supporting farmers to make informed decisions on their farm management and production practices. This training manual fits in this broader commitment, to support a shift towards a paradigm of agricultural production that can sustain food and nutrition security while at the same time cause the least harm to natural ecosystems. The manual is intended as an introduction to agricultural biodiversity, and to its relevance to different aspects of agricultural production and management for smallholder farmers in Kenya. It includes eight different training modules, each covering a specific aspect related to agrobiodiversity. The modules are standalone and can be used independently one from the other, depending on the user’s or project’s aim. The materials were originally prepared within the FAO- Netherlands Partnership Programme (FNPP) and have been updated, revised and published under the second phase of the European Union-funded project “Capacity-building related to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries”.

Published in three other languages and growing, Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Ecosystems takes a look at how farmers manage, maintain, and benefit from biodiversity in agricultural production systems. The volume includes the most recent research and developments in the maintenance of local diversity at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. Chapters cover the assessment and farmer management practices for crop, livestock, aquatic, and associated diversity (such as pollinators and soil microorganisms) in agricultural ecosystems; examine the potential role of diversity in minimizing pest and disease pressures; and present studies that exemplify the potential nutritional, ecosystem service, and financial values of this diversity under changing economic and environmental conditions. The volume contains perspectives that combine the thinking of social and biological scientists. Inappropriate or excessive use of inputs can cause damage to biodiversity within agricultural ecosystems and compromise future productivity. This book features numerous case studies that show how farmers have used alternative approaches to manage biodiversity to enhance the stability, resilience, and productivity of their farms, pointing the way toward improved biodiversity on a global scale. As custodians of the world's agricultural biodiversity, farmers are fully invested in ways to create, sustain, and assist in the evolution and adaptation of a variety of plant and animal species. Thus this text is mandatory reading for conservationists, environmentalists, botanists, zoologists, geneticists, and anyone interested in the health of our ecosystem.