And nature does return the favour. Research shows that natural areas offer benefits to crop production in agricultural landscapes. The pollination services alone, which are critical to food production, increase crop yields when nature is embedded in agricultural fields.

The forage and grasslands that cattle ranchers and dairy farmers rely on also support 60 different Canadian species at risk.

Both crop and livestock farms offer nature-based solutions for better biodiversity outcomes. DUC sits at a variety of tables for discussions around food, farming and nature. We sit at farm kitchen tables to support those who grow and raise our food.

We sit at boardroom tables with the agricultural industry to help influence decision-making to include conservation. We partner with restaurants and agricultural supply companies to help them source sustainable ingredients and products while protecting and restoring nature.

And we work with governments at all levels by bringing our scientific expertise and conservation know-how to the policy table. To find sustainable solutions in an increasingly complex world, we need pragmatic partnerships and conservation needs to have a seat at the table to ensure Canadian agriculture is recognized for more than just the food it produces.

These inventories will improve on-farm decision making and create greater transparency for consumers who want reassurance that their food is derived from good land stewardship.

They will also help estimate the economic values of these ecological services provided by farmers and ranchers—ones that benefit all Canadians. Action: Optimize lands that are currently in production and provide incentives to re-naturalize land that is having a negative return on investment.

Action: Prioritize soil health. Establishing a National Strategy for Soil Health is the first, important step in this direction.

As the world gathers in Montreal for COP15 , we encourage these leaders to consider our agricultural landscapes and how biodiverse these areas truly are. With the right tools, they can deliver even more. Mitigation translocation has become increasingly more common in B. since the Sea to Sky project.

The first step is to identify growers that want to voluntarily participate in converting marginal land within their fields from cultivated areas to forages. Once the marginal areas are identified, a grower gets financial support in converting those marginal areas to forages.

It's about taking those less productive areas out of production, saving the input costs and still making the acres productive for the grower. For the Conservation Exchange Pilot, DUC will quantify the soil carbon, biodiversity, water quality and water quantity outcomes from that restored marginal areas land.

The Government of Canada, and their provincial partners, will conduct quality assurance on the biodiversity outcomes of the MAP project. This verification step is highly valued by the project partners. Marginal areas are seeded with commercially available grass and forage seed mixtures.

They can increase habitat suitability for pollinators so growers can increase pollination rates. In taking marginal lands out of production, growers are saving on the input cost. They are no longer putting in money every year and either losing money or not getting that return on investment back in those acres.

It should be a financial benefit because that seeded forage can also be used, whether it's cut for hay or grazed. It should have both a financial direct and indirect benefit to the growers. I have seen countless examples from the reclamation and water efficiencies and treatment at our NPK manufacturing, to our expert agronomic advice in the field.

In addition, Nutrien is currently embarking on an enterprise-wide nature biodiversity and water assessment to look at our impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities related to biodiversity and water.

Nutrien Nutrien Ag Solutions - Retail.

The Central American banana industry avoided complete collapse by adopting another variety, the Cavendish banana, which was resistant to the fungus, but also smaller and less flavorful.

Biodiversity saved the banana industry 70 years ago, but the industry has repeated the mistake: the Cavendish banana makes up 99 percent of all banana exports today.

Now, as another strain of Panama Disease that can attack the Cavendish Banana threatens to overtake the industry, researchers are turning to other, less common banana varieties to try and breed more resistant crops. By destroying soil carbon stocks and relying on greenhouse gas-intensive fertilizers, low biodiversity systems in agriculture — both crop monocultures and factory farms — accelerate climate change.

In turn, climate change poses threats to agriculture: crops will need to survive in drier, saltier soils and withstand more frequent floods, and livestock will need to adapt to extreme weather conditions. These traits are found in varieties of crops and livestock around the world, but many of them have been mostly displaced by uniform varieties that are best suited to industrial agriculture.

Ultimately, adapting agriculture to the challenges of climate change will require preserving and drawing from the same pool of genetic resources that industrial breeding has steadily whittled down for decades.

Food is one of the defining aspects of culture, and every cuisine on earth relies on unique crops and livestock. Sadly, many varieties are being replaced by commercially-bred crops often imported from other countries.

While possibly more productive in chemical-intensive monocultures, the new crops tend to displace culturally important varieties. When local varieties of crops disappear, this can compromise food sovereignty — the ability of a community to access culturally appropriate food at a fair price.

This ultimately funnels wealth from small farmers worldwide into the hands of large agribusinesses. Many farmers are forced off their land as costs rise, even when they choose to continue growing traditional crops; the rush to cash in on lucrative new varieties drives up demand for farmland, making traditional farms unable to compete.

By embracing both traditional knowledge and new research, farmers and scientists are producing food in a way that harnesses biodiversity to make the most of what nature provides. This approach is called agroecology, and is a core component of regenerative agriculture, which builds up natural resources like healthy soil and water rather than using them up.

Preserving and reviving these Indigenous traditions can make agriculture around the world more sustainable and help preserve biodiversity. Harnessing biodiversity is key to this, and breaking up big, monocultured fields with just a few more species can bring great benefits to both crops and wildlife.

For example, legumes like beans and lentils add vital nitrogen into the soil, which other plants need to grow. This has benefits that stretch beyond the farm: incorporating legumes into diverse fields not only provides crops with natural fertilizer, it avoids all of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with using synthetic fertilizers, and helps curb global warming.

Mixing plants together like this is called intercropping, and this can help lower the environmental footprint of a farm. Even without chemical inputs, farmers can see enormous benefits when they grow crops in intercropped systems: experiments with corn, beans, wheat, bananas and other crops have all shown that such systems can be more productive than their industrial counterparts while enhancing biodiversity on the farm and making a varied, rich habitat for wildlife.

Another technique that creates biodiverse agroecosystems is agroforestry also a traditional, Indigenous method of land management , which works woody plants into crops and pastures. This can include fruit or nut trees, or shrubs that are cut and harvested for biofuel.

Tree roots also enhance soil fertility by adding carbon and preventing erosion; compared to a traditional monoculture, some agroforestry systems see a 40 percent increase in yields of many crops. Livestock are often important players in agroecological systems.

By eating residues of harvested crops and other materials that might go to waste, animals in an agroecological system are less resource-demanding than their counterparts on a feedlot. Indigenous peoples around the world have used grazing livestock in this way to manage grasslands to maximize productivity, and adopting these systems today can benefit biodiversity on wild grasslands.

Diverse livestock breeds also have unique behaviors that help maintain a varied agroecosystem; different kinds of livestock have different grazing patterns, for example, and therefore an array of species and breeds can foster immense biodiversity in a pasture.

Adding animals to an agroecological system can also become another income stream for farmers, especially in low income areas; this financial boost is critical to maintaining more sustainable farms.

Biodiverse agroecosystems also create rich, low-chemical habitats where wild organisms can thrive. Surveys of biodiversity in agriculture have found that birds, invertebrates and other small animals are more abundant and more diverse when agroecosystems incorporate a variety of crops.

Diverse agroecosystems can see up to 50 percent reduction in pests and twice as much pollinator activity compared to monocultures where beneficial insects are excluded. This improves soil and attracts pollinators while providing some hay for livestock.

Farms with prairie strips can foster insect and bird populations that are three times more diverse than farms without them, and see dramatic reductions in fertilizer runoff and soil loss, lightening their footprint. Fostering communities of beneficial wild animals is a key part of integrated pest management, or IPM.

Integrated pest management treats pesticides as the option of last resort for protecting crops, and instead focuses on using beneficial relationships between insects and plants as a first line of defense. Although building a functional and robust agroecosystem takes effort, these approaches generally see lower levels of damaging pests than conventional systems, where pesticides indiscriminately kill off beneficial insects along the way.

This includes seed and gene banks, but also requires the participation of farmers, gardeners, and eaters around the globe. Indigenous communities worldwide are important protectors of agricultural biodiversity. Sadly, these genetic resources are often taken from the communities that preserved them, and then privatized.

A vital part of maintaining biodiversity is recognizing these communities for their work and appropriately compensating them. Projects should allow smallholder farmers to lead the way in preserving and cataloging biodiversity while also giving them a platform to benefit: the Potato Park, for example, pays Andean farmers to catalog and develop biodiversity, and doubled local incomes while expanding crop diversity.

Other seed preservation projects work by collecting seeds and placing them in long-term storage. Organizations like the Crop Trust preserve thousands of crop varieties, while studying their genetic makeup and keeping records about their cultural heritage.

One of the largest seed banks in the world, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, holds over a million samples from around the planet in cold storage. Livestock preservation is equally important. It is possible to preserve sperm and egg cells from animals in a way that mirrors seed banks for crops, and the FAO has already established regional gene banks for animals in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Organizations like the Livestock Conservancy do this by helping network people who raise heritage breeds, providing knowledge on how to raise them and helping them maintain a large breeding pool in multiple areas. Keeping crop and livestock varieties on farms and in gardens is equally important.

First name Last name Email address. By subscribing to communications from FoodPrint, you are agreeing to receive emails from us. We promise not to email you too often or sell your information. Why Biodiversity Matters Biodiversity is what makes every environment on earth unique.

Terms to Know. DIG DEEPER. Read More About Industrial Crop Production. LEARN MORE. How Industrial Agriculture Affects Our Water.

Algae Blooms and Eutrophication Chemical use can also impact ecosystems far from the farm. Click here to view a larger version of this graphic The widespread loss of biodiversity in agriculture is an example of what biologists call genetic erosion.

Low Biodiversity Threatens our Food Supply Monocultures may offer consistency to farmers and the food industry, but they pose a risk to food security. Industrial Agriculture Compromises Cultural Identity Food is one of the defining aspects of culture, and every cuisine on earth relies on unique crops and livestock.

Regenerative Agriculture. Livestock in Agroecological Systems Livestock are often important players in agroecological systems. Read More About Pesticides in Our Food System. What You Can Do Help preserve wild biodiversity by choosing lower-impact organic foods whenever possible.

Donate to organizations like seed banks and other community-based initiatives that preserve biodiversity, especially those benefiting indigenous communities. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint.

Sweetlove, Lee. Roos, Christopher I. Department of the Interior, www. Phippen, J. Stanley, Greg. Kissinger, Gabrielle, et al.

Busch, Jonah, and Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon. A Meta-Analysis. Harvey, Fiona. Gonthier, David J. Schütte, Gesine, et al. Whitehorn et al. Ali, Sara et al. Tsiafouli, Maria A. Brussaard, Lijbert, et al. Oertel, Cornelius, et al.

Department of Commerce, 12 June , www. Hale, Stephen S. Accessed 10 Dec. Alexander, Timothy J. Mooney, Harold, et al. Bellard, Céline, et al. Charles, Dan. Smith, Bruce D. Van de Wouw, M. Genetic erosion in crops: concept, research results and challenges. Plant Genetic Resources, 8 01 , 1— Pingali, P.

The Green Revolution and Crop Biodiversity. Biological Extinction, — Stokstad, Erik. We have been partnering to understand how to best enable farmers to reduce carbon emissions and sequester carbon in the soil through agricultural management practices, and generate a validated, verified carbon credit that can create value for the grower.

Ducks Unlimited Canada DUC has been a long-standing conservation partner with Nutrien. All three organizations have mutual interest in supporting sustainable agriculture, and decided to come together, leveraging the relationships and the work from the carbon program.

This is an opportunity to showcase that we are shifting towards optimizing crop production on productive acres and moving away from maximizing production across all acres. Doing so through the Conservation Exchange Pilot allows us to highlight how in field management of landscapes can contribute to positive biodiversity outcomes.

The program will focus on southwest Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan. The first step is to identify growers that want to voluntarily participate in converting marginal land within their fields from cultivated areas to forages. Once the marginal areas are identified, a grower gets financial support in converting those marginal areas to forages.

It's about taking those less productive areas out of production, saving the input costs and still making the acres productive for the grower. For the Conservation Exchange Pilot, DUC will quantify the soil carbon, biodiversity, water quality and water quantity outcomes from that restored marginal areas land.

The Government of Canada, and their provincial partners, will conduct quality assurance on the biodiversity outcomes of the MAP project. This verification step is highly valued by the project partners. Marginal areas are seeded with commercially available grass and forage seed mixtures.

They can increase habitat suitability for pollinators so growers can increase pollination rates. In taking marginal lands out of production, growers are saving on the input cost.