Agrobiodiversity will illuminate entirely new operating procedures for all stakeholders involved in the production and delivery process end-to-end. The scope of agrobiodiverse products is arguably one of the largest yet in the marketplace of food claims. Within the Ten Principles of Agrobiodiversity, there are implied a significant number of new definitions of measurement, property rights, standards and considerations that extend the concept of product claims beyond current definitions.
How agrobiodiversity is defined will affect how the existing market needs to evolve to accommodate it. Existing food systems are highly optimized for efficiency, which is a good thing given the dependency of the world on them. It’s obvious but worth stating that moving around a single homogenous item is vastly easier than moving around a multitude of smaller diverse items; effort is positively correlated with cost and value. Food supply chains have evolved in a manner that starts from this base of simplicity and the economic benefits in scales of efficiency.
Markets and food supply chains have reacted in a very ad-hoc manner to the torrent of input created by the very act of creating requirements for transparency. Transparency has been foisted on supply chains largely by the market of verified claims and standards. Claims and standards have evolved from all realms of food production and consumption and become relevant in markets through their definition, application and verification. Agrobiodiversity will likely follow a similar track and due to its breadth will be the impetus to evolve concepts of transparency even deeper into food supply chains.
Prior food claims evolutionary paths provide guidance as to how these various aspects are changed and in some real sense there may be the opportunity to use existing claims structures to address elements of what agrobiodiverse products will be defined as. For example, there is a significant body of work within the industry globally on addressing soil health and the broad topic of what it means to be sustainable. A review of relevant claims and defined standards structures of these concepts, regarding the definition of agrobiodiversity, may be a good starting point and could yield good opportunities to fit existing work into a larger whole.
As supply chain systems have reacted to the requirements claims have instilled in the markets they operate in, there is a necessary operationalization of those requirements on individual stakeholders to meet those standards criteria. For example, next generation claims standards in the US have extensive human-based elements to them. How people who are involved in the process of food production are treated and what the effect of that treatment is on the definition of a product is a good evolution. This is a very complex issue though that requires a level of pay and benefits transparency, within a cultural context, that at a very functional level requires stakeholders to restructure entire internal processes to be able to provide. Similarly to predicates in soil and sustainability claims, these prior efforts may also accelerate or inform the practical application of agrobiodiversity definitions and measures in these areas.
Claims and standards have other real effects on supply-chain systems in the realms of intellectual property. As claims and standards are often protected identities, copyright, patent and other legal ownership structures are often a critical element of ensuring the value of a defined thing, is retained legally by people or organizations that created it, or, benefit from it. As with the economics of supply chains, these concepts began in simple, non-complex fashions. As markets evolve it is a reasonable expectation that they too become more complex, enabled by new technology and iterated in broader, more complex corporations of ownership. There is valuable effort in the creation of agrobiodiversity related concepts and that value should be protected to enable and sustain the principles expressed in the agrobiodiversity identity. Furthermore, stakeholders whose actions deliver new outcomes will likely benefit from ensuring that effort is not co-opted by non-compliant players. Falsely making a claim of agrobiodiversity should be functionally and legally disabled.
In very human terms, defined and verifiable claims are a key component to scale it in a trustless fashion. That is to say that the defined idea can benefit from social transmission but is not confined to it. Thorough and valid standards require practicality each stakeholder must assess against the reality of their own context. Within that, claims can be a roadmap for new entrants to understand and learn how to change their activities and validate for themselves that they are doing something different. It is important to note, a viable and operable standard is only adequately achieved by inclusion of all stakeholders in the standards building process. This is especially so with aggregators, processors and shippers as there are physical realities of these elements, and sunk capital, that can prove to be true impediments.
Defined claims also enable a triadic market structure through claims advocacy. Claims advocacy, championed by claims specialists advocating for the expansion and application of the claim, play a key role in the process of ensuring the claim is changing stakeholder activity. Claim advocacy then takes a unique position that is a natural check and balance to other market forces that might otherwise dilute, distort or distract market actions toward an outcome not defined within the claim standard or structure. Claims advocacy should also seamlessly function as the validator whose activities meet the qualitative and quantitative measures of the claim. This naturally entails providing objective guidance to where measures might not have been achieved and ameliorative next-best actions. The engagement of claims advocacy is to promote the idea, involve as many people as are willing to participate in the idea and then work on behalf of the idea to propagate it. In this way, claims advocates are the binding function between stakeholder responsibilities. Advocacy isn’t just certification, but broader in the effort to expand the ecosystem of the claim.
The 10 principles are a good directional definition of the outcomes that are expected by enacting change within global food supply chains. The next step in the evolution of the concept of agrobiodiversity as a claim, needs to focus on the development of what role each stakeholder has in the creation of those outcomes. Edges of influence are important in the concept of then identifying the qualitative and quantitative elements that will be assessed within each stakeholder’s realm of influence. This process will also identify where there are key conflicts between the directional outcomes and the existing technology and systems ability to deliver them.
Technological solutions can bridge many of these, especially where systems integrations or data sharing are a root cause issue. There may however also exist fundamental market structures that need to be solved for. For example, in many instances the aggregation of food products at the processor and shipping levels have proved to be a significant hurdle in routing newly defined products through embedded food distribution infrastructure. This challenge is often met with one of two potential solutions. First, investing in a new less-centralized or decentralized distribution network is a way around these issues. This can be a reasonable course of action if some elements of that distribution network are already in place, however building from scratch is capital intensive and time-consuming. Second, aggregating like products under a defined claim can enable the volume necessary to make use of existing infrastructure. This can make use of the efficiency of bulk transport, however, inherently requires intermingling of like products, thereby obfuscating individual source transparency.
Agrobiodiversity will change actions and outcomes in the global food market. Like food claims before it, there will likely be a natural progression and validation of the idea within existing contexts. The key first step is a proposition of the structure and the evolution from principles to a more taxonomical definition. This definition then becomes the basis of the dialogue to validate, through the input of practicality from stakeholders, and apply the relevant claim elements to the respective market players. A very good example of the next evolutionary step is the Agrobiodiversity Index.
The Agrobiodiversity Index (AI) is an innovative framework that helps to measure the status of agrobiodiversity in diets and markets, agricultural production, and genetic resource management, and to assess to what extent commitments and actions of different food systems actors are contributing to its sustainable use and conservation. Designed by Bioversity International (now the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT), the tool provides insights on policy and business levers, as well as risks and opportunities, to increase use and conservation of agrobiodiversity to achieve sustainable food systems. The AI has 22 indicators, comprising three commitment indicators, four action indicators and 15 status indicators across the three pillars (see figure/table), which are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Aichi biodiversity targets The framework of the index is built on scientific foundations of agrobiodiversity functions in the food system and on input from public and private stakeholders across the food system (Agrobiodiversity Index Scientific foundations & Methodology report 2019 . The AI development and implementation takes a design approach. The AI will continue to evolve and improve, as more information, datasets and analytical work can be undertaken.
To represent the demand from different food system actors (public, private, mixed) the AI can be adapted to different forms. The country, company, project or supply chain indices share the same architecture, but allow varied input data and different final products. Specific AI applications have been designed to support different food system actors in making informed decisions in food and agriculture:
- Risk and resilience assessment: the AI provides food system actors with insights on their exposure to different risk areas (malnutrition, poverty trap, climate change, land degradation, pests and diseases, and biodiversity loss) when agrobiodiversity is low.
- Intervention planning: the AI can be used to plan interventions and formulate evidence-based strategies by comparing the outcomes of different interventions in food markets, supply chains, production or agricultural genetic resource management on agrobiodiversity.
- Global policy alignment: Indicators in the AI are aligned with one or more of the SDG and Aichi targets. Users interested in monitoring progress towards these global targets can use performance on the AI indicators. This also helps identify if agrobiodiversity is effectively integrated into global policy interventions.
- Ranking and benchmarking: the AI scores can be used to compare performance on use and conservation of agrobiodiversity among countries, within a company or among projects. This can stimulate positive behaviour change as part of the ‘race to the top’ to improve sustainable use and conservation of agrobiodiversity, as well as foster exchange of knowledge and best practices.
