Networking agrobiodiversity management to foster biodiversity-based agriculture

Biodiversity-based agriculture is the main form of agriculture practiced by smallholder farmers, who produce half the world’s food, especially in the Global South. This form of agriculture relies on planned biodiversity intentionally managed by farmers and on the associated biodiversity that spontaneously colonizes the agroecosystem. In recent decades, there have been increasing calls from researchers and society to support biodiversity-based agriculture as an alternative paradigm to today’s industrial agriculture. This paper first reviews the literature on the role of social networks in farmers’ access to agrobiodiversity, in the form of crop diversity and associated biodiversity, and the related knowledge to manage this diversity. Then, the paper looks at literature on social-ecological networks to identify how this framework developed for environmental management could contribute in getting a better understanding of the role of social networks’ structure and composition in farmers’ access to agrobiodiversity. Finally, the authors present potential applications of a framework to develop new participatory approaches for agrobiodiversity management and governance, adapted to biodiversity-based agriculture.