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As covered in this post on World Biodiversity Day, the theme for this year’s celebration is “Biodiversity and Agriculture,” highlighting the role of biological diversity in keeping our people fed today and in the future. A high biodiversity is crucial to sustainable agriculture, the only kind of food production where we can be sure that everybody has enough to eat for generations.

Sustainable agriculture leads to food security and sovereignty. Security- contrary to popular belief, food is the most the third most important thing for humans (or most animals, for that matter), not sex :D, after air and water. When resources like food becomes scarce, social disturbances are not far behind.

Sovereignty? When a nation relies on another to feed its people, it won’t be able to shore up its social and political structure, succumbing to the ways of the countries feeding it. The most recent example of this was the former Soviet Union. When it imported wheat in great quantities from the U.S. in the ’80s rather than change its production and consumption pattern, it didn’t take long for the union to dissolve.

What’s happening with agricultural biodiversity right now? Modern agriculture, with its inclination to select the bestest (which is subjective) to produce the mostest, has managed to narrow down the list of food-producing species to a selected few. Not only that, it also defined what is “acceptable” food. Steak and burgers? Yummy! Bugs and crawly things? Gross!

What is wrong with developing a particular crop or animal to its full food-producing potential, we may ask. Nothing, except that “development” usually means putting all our eggs in one basket (pretty attractive for diseases and pests), massive use of chemicals to support high-yielding species and varieties, and killing the soil. In short, it is not sustainable and, sooner or later, we are going to run out of resources to keep this kind of agriculture going. It is ironic that the Green Revolution, whose aim is to produce more food, and globalization of the food system and marketing is threatening our future food supply.

Biodiversity in agriculture has the following benefits:

1. Ensure sustainable productivity.

Different species and varieties have different requirements so they will be able to utilize all available resources rather than relying on one. For example, if all of us love burgers, what will happen to natural resources that supports the production of beef?

2. Utilizes natural adaptation.

Indigenous species (plants and animals originally living in a specific environment) are already used to the pests and diseases within their locality and may have already developed immunity or tolerance. Introducing more “acceptable” food species in a new, and hostile environment, means we may have to support production with chemicals and hormones.

3. Produce other products for total ecosystem health.

Certain food species produces by-products that are needed for a healthy ecosystem. For instance, legumes are also nitrogen-fixers. They actively take nitrogen (a macro nutrient needed for plant growth) from the air and return it to the soil in a form that can be absorbed by other plants.

4. Potential future value.

Some species that doesn’t look very important now may actually be the key to something we will be looking for in the future. We haven’t mapped the gene code for every food species so rather than risk losing something that will be a life-saver later on, we can, instead, try to save and preserve as many as we can today.

Should we really try to impose our tastes and preferences on everybody else or should we be happy we have meat eaters, vegetarians, and fish lovers? Hey, there’s this study about blood types and nutrition here. Not sure how accurate it is but if its true then we have been programmed to be different in diet requirements to ensure survival of the species.

Other posts you’ll want to read:

• Why is biodiversity important?
• Celebrate the World Biodiversity Day!
• How can we preserve biodiversity in our community?
• Pollution and loss of biodiversity.
• The Youth Should Take the Lead in Sustainable Development.

Technorati Tags: animals, biodiversity, Environment, nature

Posted on June 14th, 2008 under Nature and Science • Tags: animals, biodiversity, Environment, nature. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback