If Biodiversity lives, the Planet lives – Slow Food's Position Paper on Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the diversity of all life, from individual genes to species up to the most complex levels, ecosystems. Without a variety of living forms, life itself would disappear, because it would lose the capacity to adapt to changes. Slow Food’s work is focused on the biodiversity that contributes to agriculture and food production: edible plant species and varieties, domesticated animal breeds, insects (including pollinators), the invertebrates and microorganisms that guarantee soil fertility and hold up the food chain in the oceans, the microflora that live in digestive systems and those that enable fermentation processes in many foods (bread, cured meats, cheeses, etc.) but also the diversity of knowledge that has allowed farmers and food producers to select and adapt plants, animals and farming techniques to different environmental contexts and to transform and preserve foods. This document sets out Slow Food’s position, its on-going initiatives and its proposals to European institutions.