Agriculture is the largest contributor to biodiversity loss with expanding impacts due to changing consumption patterns and growing populations. Agriculture destroys biodiversity by converting natural habitats to intensely managed systems and by releasing pollutants, including greenhouses gases.
Is maintaining biodiversity for agriculture important?
Many livelihoods, such as those of farmers, fishers and timber workers, are dependent on biodiversity . Ecological life support— biodiversity provides functioning ecosystems that supply oxygen, clean air and water, pollination of plants, pest control, wastewater treatment and many ecosystem services.
How does biodiversity benefit medicine and agriculture?
Biodiversity Underpins Economic Activity
Food production relies on biodiversity for a variety of food plants, pollination, pest control, nutrient provision, genetic diversity, and disease prevention and control. Both medicinal plants and manufactured pharmaceuticals rely on biodiversity.
How does biodiversity provide people’s medical needs?
Diets based on a diversity of food species promote health, and can help to protect against disease by addressing the problem of micronutrient and vitamin deficiencies. Loss of agricultural biodiversity can therefore threaten health, livelihood sustainability and our future security of food and nutrition.
What do you mean by biodiversity write in the context of agriculture and health care?
Food biodiversity is “the diversity of plants, animals and other organisms used for food, covering the genetic resources within species, between species and provided by ecosystems.” Historically at least 6,000 plant species and numerous animal species have been used as human food.
What is the greatest impact on biodiversity caused by agriculture?
AGRICULTURE AND BIODIVERSITY. In addition to its effects on climate, the expansion of agriculture has caused massive losses in biodiversity around the world: natural habitats have been converted to farms and pastures, pesticides and fertilizers have polluted the environment, and soils have been degraded.
Why is biodiversity so important for agriculture?
Biodiversity is of great importance to farmers. Crops, livestock, insects, water systems, soils and natural landscapes all interact with each other. … Having the ability to select different crop species increases a farmer’s arsenal for events such as pest infestations, climate shifts or new market pressures.
Why is biodiversity important to human biodiversity?
Biodiversity is important to humans for ecological life support, biodiversity gives a functioning ecosystem that provides oxygen, clear air and water, plant pollutions, pest control, wastewater treatment and lots of ecosystem services.
Why biodiversity is important for food?
Biodiversity is essential to food and agriculture
It supplies many vital ecosystem services, such as creating and maintaining healthy soils, pollinating plants, controlling pests and providing habitat for wildlife, including for fish and other species that are vital to food production and agricultural livelihoods.