Biodiversity for Food & Agriculture : Do We really care ?
Biodiversity for Food & Agriculture : Do We really care ? Biodiversity for food and agriculture includes the components of biological diversity that are essential for feeding human populations and improving the quality of life. It includes the variety and variability of ecosystems, animals, plants and micro-organisms, at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, which are necessary to sustain human life as well as the key functions of ecosystems. Such diversity is the result of thousands of years of farmers’ and breeders’ activities, land and forest utilization, and fisheries and aquaculture activities combined with millions of years of natural selection. Most of the human population lives in areas where food production and nature co-exist together. The large and increasing number of under- and mal-nourished in the world, the prospect of rising inequality, difficulty of access to food by the most vulnerable populations, the decreased availability of natural resources and the...