Research
Happy International Day of Biodiversity
Join us on a journey to find out more about work we are doing to promote the use and conservation of agricultural and forest biodiversity. Bioversity International celebrates smallholder farmers who are using and conserving vital biodiversity around the world.
Experts call for action to address the loss of knowledge about plants
Concerned by the alarming loss of plant species, on 1-2 May international experts met in St Louis, USA, calling for a concerted worldwide effort to address the loss of essential knowledge about plants and their uses, especially at the level of local communities.
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Our beneficiaries
Smallholder farmers
The role of women in food production
Women farmers produce 60-80% of the food that is consumed locally in developing countries. They are the keepers of food culture in their communities and play a vital role in conserving and using biodiversity in their farming systems.
Non-staple minor crops as well as animal husbandry can increase income security for women.
Smallholder farmers and their communities in developing countries will be the key beneficiaries of our research programme. We will initially focus on countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where malnutrition remains a chronic problem.
At least half of the world’s food-insecure people are smallholder farmers living in poverty. Yet smallholder farms produce around one third of the world's food and play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity. Many of these farmers are women, who are disproportionately poor and vulnerable to malnutrition, which affects not only themselves but their children as well.
Although women and children remain the most vulnerable to the consequences of malnutrition, beneficiaries of our work will include entire smallholder household families.
Communities at risk of traditional food system loss
Photo: S. Padulosi/Bioversity
These communities have developed a subsistence base derived from the natural resources available from specific ecosystems. Some of these ecosystems and traditional food systems are threatened or in transition.
These beneficiaries, including farmers, pastoralists, forest communities and fisher folk, are some of the most nutritionally vulnerable to the global food system, particularly in poverty stricken, food-insecure communities.
Populations living in urban and peri-urban settings without access to diversity
With the world’s population expected to grow significantly in the next 30 years, and many more people migrating and living in urban centres, there will be a need to increase quality food production both nutritionally and environmentally, and to ensure that food distribution and access is more equitable.
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 | Bioversity International is a member of the CGIAR consortium |
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This work by Bioversity International is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. |
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