Answer:
The food we humans eat every day throughout our lives comes from agricultural biodiversity. Biodiversity is the basis of agriculture and our food systems. It has enabled farming systems to evolve since the origin of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Our civilization evolved when human beings started domesticating plants and animals.
Agricultural biodiversity includes all components of biological diversity of relevance to food and agriculture. It includes plants’ genetic resources: crops, wild plants harvested and managed for food, trees on farms, pastures and rangeland species, medicinal plants and ornamental plants of aesthetic value. Animal genetic resources include domesticated animals, wild animals hunted for food, wild and farmed fish and other aquatic organisms, insect pollinators and microbial and fungal genetic resources.
Agricultural biodiversity provides humans with food, raw materials for goods such as: cotton and wool for clothing; wood for shelter and fuel; plants and roots for medicines; and materials for biofuels. Agricultural biodiversity also performs ecosystem services such as soil and water conservation, maintenance of soil fertility, conservation of biota and pollination of plants, all of which are essential for food production and for human survival. In addition, genetic diversity of agricultural biodiversity provides species with the ability to adapt to changing environments and to evolve by increasing their adaptation to frost, high temperature, drought and waterlogging as well as their resistances to diseases, insects and parasites.
The importance of agricultural biodiversity encompasses socio-cultural, economic and environmental elements. All domesticated crops and animals result from management of biodiversity, which is constantly responding to new challenges to maintain and increase productivity under constantly varying conditions and population pressures. Agricultural biodiversity is essential to satisfy basic human needs for food and livelihood security
