On September 25th, the \u201cGlobal Day of Action\u201d for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, I joined a line-up of chefs, farmers, seed savers, educators, policymakers and consumers in an immersive experience designed to raise awareness of the importance of crop diversity and its connection to healthy soils and resilient, sustainable agricultural systems. Discussions focused on what the future of food could be like if we conserve and use the amazing diversity of our foods.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s good on a farm and on your plate is diversity. By rotating crops and increasing the diversity of farmland, including livestock production, we create a diverse food supply chain that positively impacts healthy, nutritious, and delicious diets. The challenge is farm production needs time to supply these diverse crops, and the supply chain needs to be patient enough to allow the production to come on stream. \u00a0Our panel highlighted the work of the FACT group to identify principles of biodiversity.\u00a0 That work is important because it can encourage the production of biodiverse crops.\u00a0 One of the great things was to see the interest of fellow panelists from Unilever and Compass in supporting biodiversity who are large-scale companies, and at the same time, biodiverse crops can support great opportunities for small enterprises to deliver diverse products into select markets.<\/p>\n
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One question that came up was livestock. Noted groups like the Rodale Institute, who had spoken earlier that day, have long focused on the importance of the classical vision of mixed or integrated farming. Grazing spaces play an important role in farming, as they usually consist of grasslands suited to livestock production based on seasonality and rain. If we extract the grazing spaces from our environment, we would deplete soils very quickly as we crop them intensively. We shouldn\u2019t focus on the elimination of livestock from our farms, but instead on striking the balance more effectively. Agrobiodiversity includes a diverse selection of livestock and crops because livestock breeds are under just as much pressure of consolidation and minimization as we see in seed cropping.<\/p>\n
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An agrobiodiverse future means conserving and using the amazing diversity of our foods. The full event is available on YouTube and our panel is at 2:32:58\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n