Kunming Manifesto calls for agrobiodiversity to transform food systems

“The world struggles to feed its growing population” is an all-too-common headline. Several reasons are behind this challenge, including inefficiencies in food production and distribution, food waste, and a lack of equitable access to healthy diets. Our food system bears significant environmental externalities, including biodiversity loss, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions. Ecosystem deterioration exacerbates the shortage of adequate food and nutrition and threatens future food security and genetic gains. Poverty, inequalities in access to food and adequate diets, and low wages are some of the social externalities in current food systems.  

According to the 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, food insecurity rose in Africa in 2024, with over 1 billion people, or two-thirds of the population, were unable to consistently access or afford a healthy diet. Globally, malnutrition is persistently prevalent in children and women.  

Only three commodity staples – rice, maize and wheat – provide two-thirds of the calories people consume. These have limited nutritional value and contribute to poor health. 

Moreover, crop commodities, generally produced at an industrial scale, require significant quantities of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that drive environmental decay, climate change, and extinction of many species. 

Our food system is broken. 

To help fix it, experts from around the globe launched the 2025 Kunming Manifesto: Agrobiodiversity for people and planet at the 2025 Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) Annual Summit on 3 September in Dakar, Senegal. 

“If we’re going to transform the global food system, we need to encourage biodiversity on our plate and bring underutilized crops back to the farmers’ field and on our tables – not only at international forums,” said Carlo Fadda, Director of Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.