Climate change, diet modifications, evolution of agricultural practices… are as many constraints that shape and transform agrobiodiversity. Anticipating them and understanding their consequences is essential to ensure mankind’s food security.
In the end, knowing the precise number of crops that feed mankind is not the most crucial point. It is however of significance to determine how agrobiodiversity will evolve in years to come, and to understand the consequences of the present trends. In the last fifty years, the relative importance of food crops has changed. However, if some have become rare, or even are declining, it seems that none has totally disappeared yet (2). Within the same time span, diets have diversified in many countries. Indeed, in Asia, crops such as potato and wheat have been introduced. This local diversification had the effect to standardize food sources at a global level: the number of crops available to consumers in some countries has increased, while simultaneously local traditional crops have seen their relative significance reduced. This standardization has manifold consequences.
For example, while the implementation of monocultures intensification may have positive effects in terms of productivity and reduction of undernutrition, it increases crop vulnerability to pests and diseases. Nutritional problems, linked to unbalanced diets, are also likely to affect a larger number of people.
What’s more, in years to come, threats to food security might drastically increase. Climatic change (Climate change ?), land pressure, diminishing resources, population increase… These factors will hamper even more the access to food, which is already restricted in many areas worldwide: today, nearly 800 million people are not free from hunger. Yet in 2050, 2 billion more inhabitants will people the planet. In order to feed the world population, diets will have to be diversified and higher-yielding varieties necessitating fewer inputs, able to withstand pests or new climate conditions will have to be developed. Breeders and farmers will only be successful in this respect if they are able to draw from as large a pool of genetic and agricultural diversity as possible.
In order to address the challenges facing agriculture, breeders will have to develop new varieties. To achieve this, they will be able to draw from the precious reserves of genetic resources banks, created to safeguard the diversity of cultivated plants.
