July 2020, South Asia 

Sustainable agriculture is fundamental to food security, India has said at a high-level UN session, and emphasised the need to bring seed diversity back as shift by farmers from local varieties to genetically uniform, high-yielding breeds has reduced the ability of crops to survive when faced with challenges.

India joined Chile and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) to co-host the High-Level Political Forum side-event ‘On the road to the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables 2021: Highlighting health and nutritional benefits through sustainable production and consumption of fruits and vegetables’.

“We believe that sustainable agriculture is fundamental to food security,” India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador K Nagaraj Naidu said on Monday.

Emphasising the importance of seed diversity, Naidu said 75 per cent of the world’s plant genetic diversity has been lost since the 1900s, as farmers have shifted from local varieties to genetically uniform, high-yielding crop breeds, thereby reducing the ability of crops to survive when faced with challenges.