Agrobiodiversity on the agenda

With the 9th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s coming up, the debate on biodiversity is spilling over from the circles of the ‘usual suspects’ to a broader public. Agricultural biodiversity, or ‘agrobiodiversity’, as an important component of biological diversity, however, remains an unknown quantity for most people. It means the variety and variability of farm animals and cultivated plants as well as the agroecosystems in which they thrive. Starting out with some background information on the loss of agrobiodiversity, this contribution goes on to discuss recent international policy developments and the challenges that lie ahead pertaining to the reversal of this trend.