Food System Impacts on Biodiversity Loss: Three Levers for Food System Transformation in Support of Nature

Summary

Biodiversity loss is accelerating around the world. The global rate of species extinction today is orders of magnitude higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years.

The global food system is the primary driver of this trend. Over the past 50 years, the conversion of natural ecosystems for crop production or pasture has been the principal cause of habitat loss, in turn reducing biodiversity.

Our food system has been shaped over past decades by the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm. Policies and economic structures have aimed to produce ever more food at ever lower cost. Intensified agricultural production degrades soils and ecosystems, driving down the productive capacity of land and necessitating even more intensive food production to keep pace with demand. Growing global consumption of cheaper calories and resource-intensive foods aggravates these pressures.

Current food production depends heavily on the use of inputs such as fertilizer, pesticides, energy, land and water, and on unsustainable practices such as monocropping and heavy tilling. This has reduced the variety of landscapes and habitats, threatening or destroying the breeding, feeding and/or nesting of birds, mammals, insects and microbial organisms, and crowding out many native plant species.

As a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, our food system is also driving climate change, which further degrades habitats and causes species to disperse to new locations. In turn, this brings new species into contact and competition with each other, and creates new opportunities for the emergence of infectious disease.