Biodiversity FAQs

Q: What is biodiversity?
A: Good question. At the most basic level, the earth's biodiversity is the sum of all life on earth. If you were to add up every kind of life which is found on this planet - the apes, the peacocks, the protozoa, the bamboo trees, etc. you would arrive at earth's biodiversity. Agricultural biodiversity is the sum of all types of plant life which humanity grows and eats. Due to human settlement and agricultural practices, the last century has seen a definitive decline in the Earth's biodiversity, particularly its agricultural biodiversity. The easiest way in which you, as a consumer, can help conserve biodiversity is by eating what we will call "biodiverse food," and in general using products which are the produce of biologically diverse crops.

Q: Whoa, slow down! Why should I care? Who wants to preserve biodiversity? And why has it declined so emphatically anyway?
A: Relax, killer. We'll get to all that below. At this point let us explain why biodiverse food is good for you.

Q: What do you mean by biodiverse food anyway?
A: Now that's a good question! We'll define a biodiverse diet as a diet which contains the following three elements:

Three Elements of a Biodiverse Diet

1. Most importantly, a biodiverse diet is based upon produce that is grown traditionally, without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, from indigenous seeds that have been conserved by the farmers, rather than produced by large seed corporations.
2. Within a broader classification, such as fruit or grain, a biodiverse diet should include more than one type of crop. That is, rather than eat only rice or wheat, a biodiverse diet would include rice, wheat, millets, amaranth and other indigenous crops.
3. A biodiverse diet should include several varieties of a single crop - e.g. not just one type of rice, but several different strains.

Q: Me, my favorite dish includes onion, rice, and lightly sautéed mangoes - this is biodiverse, right?
A: Au contraire, good fellow. It could be biodiverse, depending on the kind of mango and the kind of rice, and your general eating patterns. However, eating different food groups is no assurance of biodiversity.

Q: Does biodiverse food differ from organic food?
A: In practice there is significant overlap between biodiverse food and organic food -- because organic food is grown without chemicals it tends to be grown using traditional methods and traditional seeds which would make it also biodiverse. However, since it is possible to grow organic produce from seeds which aren't genetically diverse, organically grown food might not be biodiverse.

Q: Now can I ask why biodiversity is important? I mean, really, why do I care?
A: From the practical to the theoretical, there are a series of potent reasons to conserve biodiversity. At the most basic level, preserving biodiversity preserves valuable genetic resources and is essential to ecosystem stability. On a more immediate level, biodiverse foods are better for the consumer, raising biodiverse crops is better for the farmer and traditional farming methods are better for the environment. Let's take a closer look at what makes this so:

Positive Effects of Biodiversity

• For the consumer: biodiverse foods are healthier than foods which are the product of monocropping. Biodiverse crops do not require the assistance of chemical pesticides and fertilisers in their growth, and so they lack the chemical residue, unavoidable in the products of monocropping.
• For the farmer: Biodiverse farming involves simultaneously farming several crops. This makes farmers less vulnerable to natural disaster. (One crop might be destroyed while another survives.) Also if market prices are too low for the farmer to support him(her)self through the sale of the crops, he/she will be able to live off the produce. This is obviously not the case with cash crops such as cotton or sugar cane. Also, traditional cropping practices do not require the huge investments that commercial pesticides and fertilisers require, allowing small farmers to retain their independence (and properties). Finally, indigenous crops often have beneficial properties which high yielding hybrids do not; for instance they might also provide good fodder or straw for the fields. Thus, biodiverse crops contribute in a variety of ways to the farmer's well-being.
• For the environment: Indigenous seeds require less resources for their production as they are better adapted to their environment and incur no direct harm to the system. Commercial hybrid seeds require intensive inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides which are bad for the environment; they destroy the ecosystems surrounding farms, they get into the community's water supply and require more resources to produce than organic fertilisers and pesticides.

Q: If biodiversity is so great for everyone, why is its destruction continuing? And, hey, what's causing its destruction anyway?
A: You asked a mouthful! First let's distinguish between biodiversity destruction as a whole and agricultural biodiversity destruction. Deforestation, clearing of land for human activities, and almost any disturbance to an existing ecosystem causes a loss in biodiversity. Within this larger destruction of biodiversity, what we are mostly interested in, as far as biodiverse food, is the destruction of agricultural biodiversity.

Q: Okay, okay. So what's causing the destruction of agricultural biodiversity.
A: It's complicated. Stay with me.

The latter half of this century saw a series of changes in agricultural practices, often termed the "Green Revolution". The use of high yielding hybrid seeds, requiring large inputs of chemical pesticides, chemical fertilisers and intensive irrigation, became widespread. This was due largely to the encouragement of international agencies and local governments who promoted such practices through financial incentives and the formation of seed agencies which distributed hybrid seeds. These incentives distorted the market, leading to the myth of increased economic benefits deriving from high-yielding seeds.

The Myth of Economic Efficiency

Since the advent of the Green Revolution, hybrid varieties of wheat and rice have been promoted as granting miraculously high yields. Proponents of indigenous Indian modes of farming were treated to stern lectures regarding their lack of economic viability. This thinking was based on entirely inaccurate economic assumptions: chief among them was that the sole measure of a crop's value is in its yield.

This assumption has little in common with reality. Indigenous methods of farming generally produced more than one crop and the value derived from each crop was not solely based on their grains. A valid economic analysis that compared the entire farming systems - indigenous methods of mixed cropping versus monocropping of "high yield" hybrids - would almost certainly find the invisible hand of economic viability pointing squarely at the biodiversity-conserving indigenous system.

Q: So how did this lead to a lessening of biodiversity?
A: Seeds need to be replanted in order to survive. When farmers started planting hybrid seeds, they stopped planting indigenous and biodiverse varieties, so these varieties quickly disappeared.

Q: Hey! It sounds like these policies were bad for almost everyone concerned. They can't still be around?
A: Unfortunately they can and they are. Their continued presence is essentially due to the benefits a few derive from their implementation. This is how it works: hybrid seeds are heavily dependent on large inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The sale and production of hybrid seeds and the chemicals upon which they are dependent is a lucrative business monopolised by a handful of multinational companies. These transnational companies, (not the hungry masses and certainly not the farmer) are the main beneficiaries of the continuing use of these hybrids. These companies tend to wield power commensurate with their virtually bottomless bank account - and this power is instrumental in dictating the perpetuation of the current agricultural system. The prime instruments of this perpetuation have come to be international organisations whose agricultural policies are largely dictated by the TNCs (transnational companies).

Particularly disturbing is the recent trend in intellectual property rights and patents on life. Through international trade agreements, western nations are trying to force developing nations to recognize patents on life forms as a legitimate act. The right to patent seeds clearly endangers agricultural biodiversity in that it prevents the farmer, the traditional agent of agricultural biodiversity, from reproducing and propagating seeds. Also, these attempts to patent seeds are simply ludicrous in any rational analysis. Modern science does not yet have the ability to create life, it simply makes slight modifications on already existing life forms. It shows unbelievable hubris for anyone to claim that they have created a new crop when all they've done is accelerated a process that indigenous farmers have been doing over centuries. Incidentally, the seeds produced in such labs rarely have the survival and reproductive potential of native seeds and remain dependent upon external inputs throughout their lives.