ABSTRACT
Our objective in this chapter is to distil some of the broad policy implications of research into the relationships between agriculture, biodiversity and markets. To place these observations in some sort of context, it is important to note that quite apart from the variance in social, political, economic and agroecological conditions faced by relevant policy-making and regulatory institutions around the world (variance that would make highly specific policy recommendations largely redundant), prior to the 1980s the terms biological diversity and biodiversity were largely unheard of. Before the early 1990s, they were not on the international political radar—agricultural biodiversity even less so (see Hannigan, 1995; Escobar, 1998). This is not to say that declines in biodiversity prior to the 1990s were too insignificant to generate either awareness or action. Nor that various aspects of biodiversity were not subject to intentional management by farmers and rural communities, investigation by scientific agencies, campaigning by NGOs and/or intervention by governments. In fact, unlike other global environmental issues such as ozone depletion and anthropogenically-induced climate change that were largely unknown before the late 20th century, considerable efforts had been made for some time to protect native species and ecosystems, to farm in ways that enhance soil biota, and to conserve and exploit the genetic diversity of important food plants and animals.
