News and Updates

Crop diversity: Why We Need to Conserve and Use It

The Crop Trust is the only organization in the world that focuses solely on building and supporting a global system of genebanks for the conservation of crop diversity. Among its various activities, the Crop Trust manages the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, which safeguards duplicates of 1,301,397 seed samples from almost every country. Its purpose is to back up genebank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply.

Crop diversity is a part of our world heritage and one of the most important global public goods we have. It has always been the basis for food production to adapt to changing conditions and to be resilient. But while this adaptability is becoming increasingly important in times of global change, crop diversity is under ever-greater threat. The aim of the seminar is to highlight the necessity of conserving crop diversity, but also to show the great opportunities that are associated with its use.

Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director of Crop Trust presents on crop diversity at the Food for Humanity special seminar (February 3, 2025).

Download the video here

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate research scientist at NASA who won the World Food Prize in 2022, said in an interview that researchers are already making progress toward breakthroughs, but their work needs to be turbocharged with more funding and emphasis from world leaders.

“It’s not that we have to dream up new solutions,” Rosenzweig said. “The solutions are very much being tested but in order to actually take them from the lab out into the agriculture regions of the world, we really do need the moonshot approach.”

Read the article on AP News

Healthy diets that are diverse, safe, and nutritious are central to all development efforts and core to USAID’s food security efforts. While supply-side investments that increase agricultural productivity remain critical, demand-driven interventions for nutritious food—by consumers, companies, and the public sector—are also a critical part of the dialogue.  

USAID requested advice from the Board of International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) on facilitating demand for healthy diets, with a view toward informing upcoming revisions of USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy and the U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy. 

BIFAD’s response recommends USAID think more ambitiously about its role in improving diets, not just by mitigating malnutrition by reducing hunger and increasing food security, but also by achieving healthier diets for all. BIFAD encouraged USAID to expand its development agenda to include more programming, policy actions, and research on creating demand for healthy food. The memo emphasized the role of the “hidden middle”, referring to the millions of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the midstream of the food system.

The report, co-authored by F4HI's Bianca Carducci, presents evidence on effective policies and interventions that:

  1. Enhance the supply of nutritious and safe food, including through off-farm activities by MSMEs across supply chains and markets. 
  2. Support demand for healthier diets post-farmgate, including purchasing and consumption of healthy diets by individuals, households, private sector companies, and governments. 

Read the full report via USAID

Jessica Fanzo, professor of Climate and director of the Food for Humanity Initiative at Columbia Climate School, says: “We need wholesale reform of our food systems so we can provide the world’s population with the nutritious food needed to grow and develop. We are facing a syndemic of challenges: increasing diet-related disease, continued undernutrition and a changing climate.”

“Combating these requires significant and rapid change. This study is so important because it shows the speed of change so far to guide more action because we can only manage what we measure.”

Read more on Food Ingredients First and IPP Media

The Crop Trust is the only organization in the world that focuses solely on building and supporting a global system of genebanks for the conservation of crop diversity. Among its various activities, the Crop Trust manages the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, which safeguards duplicates of 1,301,397 seed samples from almost every country. Its purpose is to back up genebank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply.

Crop diversity is a part of our world heritage and one of the most important global public goods we have. It has always been the basis for food production to adapt to changing conditions and to be resilient. But while this adaptability is becoming increasingly important in times of global change, crop diversity is under ever-greater threat. The aim of the seminar is to highlight the necessity of conserving crop diversity, but also to show the great opportunities that are associated with its use.

Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director of Crop Trust presents on crop diversity at the Food for Humanity special seminar (February 3, 2025).

Download the video here

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