Why biodiversity is vital to food security

As the COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia wraps up, it is increasingly clear that biodiversity and food insecurity are intimately linked. Why is the biological richness of the world so important to the food we eat?

Why is biodiversity so important to food?​

“There is no human food without the food chain, from the smallest microorganism transforming the inorganic to the organic to the largest ruminants enhancing ecosystem functioning in the largest terrestrial biome on earth – grasslands,” Simon Kraemer, policy steward for regenerative agrifood systems at the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA), told FoodNavigator.

“Indigenous food systems have stewarded ecosystems for biocultural diversity increase for thousands of years. Since agriculture has become exploitative with the use of ploughs and the segregation of plant and animal cultivation, biodiversity has been decreasing the last 2000 years.”

"Soil health is highly impacted by biodiversity, which in turn affects the way plants grow," Tom Stuart, senior policy advisor at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told FoodNavigator. “Soil is more than just a lifeless material; it’s a complex ecosystem full of living things, or organisms. These organisms help soil function effectively, making nutrients available to plants, forming structures that support root growth, and regulate water flow to both retain moisture in dry weather and prevent flooding during heavy rain.

“Nature also provides essential ‘ecosystem services’," he continued, "like pollination, pest control, and waste decomposition. When biodiversity decreases, these services are reduced, making it harder to grow the food we rely on.”

How does reduced biodiversity affect food security?​

Without biodiversity, EARA’s Kraemer told us, production will be more fragile, crop diseases more prevalent, and food less nutritious.

Poor soil health impacts the food system in clear and significant ways, WWF’s Stuart told us. “Soil loss and degradation pose significant risks to long-term food production, and in some cases, fields are already unproductive – such as with the ‘wasted peat’ issue. In 2024, the UK saw its second-lowest yield for arable crops since records began in 1983 – this is largely down to flooding.

“More resilient, better-structured soils that are adapted to climate change would have reduced the impact of this extreme rainfall. In severe cases, the collapse of local pollinator populations has forced some Chinese growers to pollinate cherry trees by hand.”

How does food production affect biodiversity loss?​

Seemingly paradoxically, while biodiversity is essential for food production, food production is, WWF's Stuart suggested, a key culprit in biodiversity loss as well.

“Pesticide use directly affects both target and non-target plants, fungi and animals. Excessive ploughing and overstocking livestock are major contributors to soil degradation, as is the decline of soil organic matter on cropland because we’ve largely shifted from animal manures to synthetic fertilisers (especially in the UK and other parts of the Global North).” Biodiversity can be supported with regenerative agriculture, he added.

How can biodiversity be increased?​

There are many ways to increase biodiversity, said WWF's Stuart. These include “ploughing less often and less deeply, reducing livestock stocking rates, using fewer artificial inputs and boosting nature with pollinator strips, field margins or riparian buffers.”

These can be supported by farming schemes such as Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes in England, and Pillar 2 schemes (a rural development policy of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP) in the EU, added Stuart.