Why Agrobiodiversity Must Sit at the Heart of Southeast Asia’s Agricultural Future
By Robert Steele / Systainability Asia
In the first essay in this series, The Next Green Revolution Must Be Regenerative, I introduced the Nested Regenerative Systems Framework as a way of thinking about how we may go about transforming agriculture and food systems for a sustainable future. At the center of this nested system is its foundational heart - agrobiodiversity. Moving outward from this biological core are a series of concentric circles, each one a crucial layer of a regenerative food system and society - agroecology, regenerative agriculture, regenerative food systems, regenerative landscapes and, nature-positive societies.
I placed agrobiodiversity at the center of the system deliberately.
This is because living systems depend upon diversity. Diversity creates relationships, functions and possibilities. It gives a system different ways to respond when conditions change. Remove enough of that diversity and a system may continue producing for a time, perhaps even very efficiently, but it also becomes more dependent on external support and more vulnerable when something unexpected happens.
This matters because much of modern agriculture has spent the past century doing almost the opposite: simplifying production, concentrating on fewer crops and varieties, and becoming increasingly dependent on external inputs to maintain productivity.
THE GREAT NARROWING
The achievements of the first Green Revolution should not be dismissed altogether. There were some positive outcomes from it. Across Asia it increased crop yields and expanded food production, and helped hundreds of millions of people to eat enough. However, it also promoted an agricultural model increasingly organised around a relatively small number of crops and high-performing crop varieties, supported by an array of exertnal inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation, mechanisation and highly specialised supply chains.
Over time, our food global system has come to rely on fewer and fewer crops. More than 30,000 edible plant species are known worldwide, yet fewer than 150 are commercially cultivated. Just four crops - sugarcane, maize, wheat and rice - account for nearly half of totall primary crop production.[1] The same pattern can also be seen in Southeast Asia's most important staple crop - rice. Nearly 75 percent of rice-production areas in Asia are now planted with modern, genetically altered, varieties of rice, particularly in lowland areas that historically contained very high genetic diversity. The ASEAN Biodiversity Outlook 3 warns that the spread of varieties with a narrower genetic base has contributed to a substantial decline in rice diversity.[2]
This concentration has certainly increase farmer capacity and efficiency. But it also as created unsustainable dependencies.
The challenge facing the next Green Revolution is not simply how to produce more from a food system built around fewer crops and varieties. It is how to restore the diversity, adaptability and ecological functions that make agriculture more resilient over time.
WHAT REALLY MAKES FOOD POSSIBLE
When we talk about agrobiodiversity, it is easy to imagine traditional seeds stored in a genebank. Those genetic resources are important, but agrobiodiversity is much broader than that.
FAO defines biodiversity for food and agriculture as “the diversity of plants, animals and microorganisms, at genetic, species and ecosystem levels, that sustain agricultural production”. It includes crops and livestock, forests, fisheries and aquaculture, crop wild relatives and wild foods. Importantly, it also includes what FAO calls associated biodiversity; things like pollinators, fungi, soil microorganisms, insects, natural pest predators and other organisms living in and around agricultural landscapes that help keep production systems functioning.[3]
In other words, agrobiodiversity is not simply what we harvest, but also the other biotic actors that makes harvesting possible.
A bee pollinating a fruit tree, fungi exchanging nutrients with plant roots, fish living within a rice field, microorganisms cycling nutrients through soil, a forest plant gathered for food or medicine, and a traditional rice variety able to tolerate flooding are all part of the biological infrastructure of food production.
Seen this way, biodiversity is not separate from agriculture, but rather, is part of the living system that agriculture depends upon.
DIVERSITY CREATES OPTIONS
The diversity found in our world becomes even more important in a period of increasing climate instability. Genetic diversity provides the raw material that allows crops and livestock to respond to heat, drought, flooding, pests and disease. FAO treats the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources as a prerequisite for climate-smart agriculture because future farming conditions may require characteristics that are not especially valuable under today's conditions.[4]
This leads us to a simple systems principle:
Diversity creates options, and options create adaptive capacity.
CGIAR's work on the future of agrobiodiversity reaches a similar conclusion. Greater agricultural biodiversity has been linked with lower exposure to risk and greater resilience, while also supporting pollination, pest and disease resistance, soil health, water conservation, food security and more diverse diets. Moreover, CGIAR cites estimates suggesting that up to 22 percent of wild crop species may become extinct by 2055.[5] (CGIAR System)
A wild plant that appears commercially insignificant today may contain a genetic trait needed to protect tomorrow's crop from drought, salinity or disease.
That is why agrobiodiversity sits at the centre of the Nested Regenerative Systems Framework. The next layer, agroecology, depends on this diversity and on the ecological relationships between species, soils, water and other parts of the living system. Regenerative agriculture then puts those ecological principles into practice on farms and across production systems.
Moving further outward, regenerative food systems depend on diverse sources of food, nutrition and livelihoods, while regenerative landscapes rely on connected habitats, species and ecological processes across the wider landscape.
Each outer layer depends on the strength and diversity of the living system at its center.
Southeast Asia's living inheritance
There is a lot of good news is that on this front as Southeast Asia is not starting from scratch. Quite the opposite. The region holds an extraordinary inheritance of agricultural diversity developed through generations of interaction between farmers, forests, rivers, wetlands, fisheries and local cultures.
The Lao PDR provides one great example. It is recognised as a globally significant repository of glutinous-rice diversity. Since the early 1990s, more than 13,500 rice samples representing over 3,000 varieties have been collected there, around 85 percent of them glutinous types. Lao PDR also retains considerable indigenous livestock diversity, aquatic biodiversity and a rich diversity of non-timber forest products.[2]
Cambodia offers another excellent example of how the agrobiodiversity that exist in this region. For instance, the UN FAO documents wild vegetables, bamboo shoots, yams, pulses and wild fruits that supplement household agriculture, food security and local diets. Some of these possess useful traits such as drought or disease tolerance, yet many remain underutilised because markets are small, or their habitats are being lost.[6]
The ASEAN Biodiversity Outlook documents Cambodia receiving 766 traditional Cambodian rice varieties back from the International Rice Research Institute in 2016, illustrating the value of genebanks as a safety net for genetic diversity.[2]
Finally, Thailand provides an equally impelling case. A 2025 study compiled 177 neglected and underutilised foods recognised within Thai traditional knowledge systems. Many have nutritional, medicinal, economic and cultural value. Yet only 47 percent were represented in either the Thai Food Composition Database or the ASEANFOODS Food Composition Table.[1]
That statistic tells us something meaningful.
A food species can still exist biologically and culturally while becoming almost invisible to the formal food system. If it is missing from nutritional databases, agricultural research, extension programmes, markets and public procurement, it becomes increasingly difficult for farmers to justify growing it and for younger consumers to recognise its value.
Agrobiodiversity can therefore begin disappearing economically and culturally long before it disappears biologically.
WHEN THE SYSTEM REWARDS SIMPLICITY
Farmers do not abandon traditional heirloom crops simply because they stop caring about biodiversity. The reason is quite practical; they respond to the system around them, which is backed up by the system thinking adage - “system structure generates behaviour response".
Research, extension services, commodity markets, credit, processing infrastructure and agricultural policy tend to concentrate attention on crops that already have established markets and support systems. Neglected species, by definition, usually have far less of either.
A recent Thailand study illustrates this policy tension particularly well. Agricultural economic zoning has prioritised 13 major commercial crops, including rice, cassava, rubber, oil palm and sugarcane. While intended to align agricultural production with market opportunities, the researchers argue that this focus can unintentionally sideline neglected and underutilised species by directing support, incentives and market access towards already established commodities.[1] This is also where we need to be careful not to romanticise traditional diversity or overlook the practical choices farmers face
Some traditional varieties may yield less. Some neglected heirloom crops have poorly developed seed supplies, as well as a lack of processing systems and markets. Farmers have families to support, loans to repay and risks to manage. We cannot expect them to conserve agricultural biodiversity simply because the rest of society considers it valuable while asking them to absorb the cost.
If we want farmers to maintain biodiversity, biodiversity itself has to regain value.
KEEPING AGRICULTURE BIODIVERSITY ALIVE
Conservation of food system biodiversity clearly matters. Genebanks provide an essential insurance policy. But heritage and heirloom crops cannot survive only inside genebanks.
They also need to remain alive in fields, home gardens, community forests, wetlands, markets and kitchens. Farmers need access to locally adapted seeds. Communities need rights over biological resources and the knowledge associated with them. Researchers need to document neglected foods. Markets need to create demand. And public policy needs to stop rewarding agricultural simplification while expecting biodiversity to survive around its edges.
EXAMPLES FOR THIS ALREADY HAPPENING
Thailand's Community BioBanks, are currently being built through the Biodiversity-Based Economy Development Office. This initiative combines both conservation and propagation of biological resources, combined with community participation, to engage local knowledge and benefit-sharing. Examples include banana diversity initiatives in Chiang Mai and Nakhon Ratchasima provinces, and a longan variety collection developed with communities and researchers in Lamphun province.[2]
There are also efforts to make neglected foods more visible to science and public policy. Mahidol University's Institute of Nutrition aims to add at least 50 additional edible species to the ASEAN Food Composition Database, alongside work on seed systems, research, producer cooperation and market development.[1]
At a wider policy level, however, the transition remains incomplete. FAO's 2025 analysis found that only 22 percent of Asia-Pacific National Food System Transformation Pathways explicitly mentioned agrobiodiversity. At the same time, 39 percent contained commitments associated with agroecology or regenerative agriculture, while 22 percent included actions involving underutilised or climate-resilient crops, community seed banks or conservation of livestock breeds.[7]
There are therefore signs of movement, but the pieces are still fragmented.
Further, FAO points towards agroecology, landscape planning, biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices and the repurposing of agricultural subsidies as important ways to bring biodiversity and food policy together.[7]
ULTIMATELY, THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE IS ‘POLICY COHERENCE’.
We cannot conserve agrobiodiversity in one ministry while subsidising its disappearance through another. We cannot ask farmers to maintain traditional seed and heritage crop varieties while markets offer them no viable return. Nor can we protect genetic resources without also protecting the forests, wetlands, rivers and cultural knowledge systems in which much of that diversity remains embedded.
BACK TO THE LIVING HEART
This brings us back to the central idea of the essay. In the Nested Regenerative Systems Framework, agro-biodiversity sits at the center because it provides the living foundation for the layers around it. It is the source of the diversity, relationships and adaptive capacity that allow the wider system to function and regenerate.
Agroecology works through those possibilities. Regenerative agriculture puts them into practice. Food systems determine whether they are economically valued. Landscapes connect them across space. And nature-positive societies become possible when ecological health, food security, livelihoods and human wellbeing begin reinforcing one another.
If we choose to use the language of natural capital, biodiversity should not be understood simply as another asset within nature's portfolio. It is part of what keeps that natural capital functioning as a living system in the first place.
The next Green Revolution therefore does not need to turn back the clock. Nor should it reject the advances in science, technology and agricultural productivity that have helped Southeast Asia feed a rapidly growing population.
But it does need to recover something the pursuit of higher yields and profits has too often pushed aside.
A LIVING SYSTEM NEEDS OPTIONS
Southeast Asia already holds many of those options in its rice varieties, livestock breeds, fish, wild foods, forests, wetlands, home gardens, seeds, microorganisms and in the accumulated knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities that have worked with these landscapes for generations.
The challenge now is not simply to preserve that inheritance.
It is to put this valuable agro-biodiversity back to work at the living heart of the region's regenerative future.
Sources and Further Reading
[1] Saiyasombat, W., Chathiran, W., Chimasangkanan, J., Bromage, S., Borelli, T., Hunter, D. & Srichamnong, W. (2025). “Filling the Gaps: Advancing Neglected and Underutilised Species and Knowledge Systems in Thailand for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability.” Journal of Sustainability, 1(2), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.55845/jos-2025-1263.
[2] ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity. (2023). ASEAN Biodiversity Outlook 3. Philippines: ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity.
[3] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2019). Asia Regional Synthesis for The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture. Rome: FAO.
[4] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2013). Climate-Smart Agriculture Sourcebook. Rome: FAO.
[5] Cenacchi, N., Gotor, E., Petsakos, A. & Schiek, B. (2022). “What do we know about the future of agrobiodiversity in relation to food systems?” CGIAR Initiative on Foresight. (CGIAR System)
[6] Li, X. & Siddique, K.H.M., eds. (2018). Future Smart Food: Rediscovering Hidden Treasures of Neglected and Underutilized Species for Zero Hunger in Asia. Bangkok: FAO.
[7] Li, J., Roehrl, S. & Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S. (2025). Mainstreaming Biodiversity across Agricultural Sectors in Asia and the Pacific: Emerging Findings from a Review of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and National Food System Transformation Pathways. Rome: FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd5351en.
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