The challenge: Today’s food systems are failing on both the consumption and production sides:
The solution: Increase agrobiodiversity in supply chains and land management to transform food and agriculture systems.
The Agrobiodiversity Index is a consistent, long-term monitoring tool to measure and manage agrobiodiversity across three dimensions: diets, production and genetic resources.
It will help decision-makers – governments, investors, companies, farmers and consumers – ensure that food systems are more diverse and sustainable.
Currently, there is no way for governments, private sector and other decision-makers to assess agrobiodiversity across food systems, or track change, in both food production and consumption. Such knowledge gaps also extend to measuring how agrobiodiversity is delivering progress to meet multiple interconnected global targets including the Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Agrobiodiversity Index is critical for decision-makers to measure and manage actions towards developing sustainable food systems:
By mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in supply chains, food and agriculture businesses can reduce risks and seize opportunities. At the same time, investors in the agri-food sector can stabilize their portfolios by directing capital toward supply chains and food brands that promote and benefit from agrobiodiversity.
Reducing risks and seizing opportunities: integrating biodiversity into food and agriculture investments explains how using the Agrobiodiversity Index, companies and governments can reduce operational and reputational risks and seize opportunities, by estimating and monitoring the agrobiodiversity impact of supply chain investments.
Agrobiodiversity is a critical component of a sustainable food system. Without it a food system cannot be sustainable.
To manage agrobiodiversity, we need to measure it.
Agrobiodiversity “includes the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms that are used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture, including crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries.” (FAO, 2005)
Allison Smith, Initiative Manager, Effective Genetic Resources Conservation and Use
This booklet presents a summary of the key messages and content from the forthcoming publication: Mainstreaming Agrobiodiversity in Sustainable Food Systems: Scientific Foundations for an Agrobiodiversity Index (2017).
The Agrobiodiversity Index is funded by the European Commission
