2 July 2008: On the occasion of the Fourth International
Conference on Sustainable Agriculture for Food, Energy and Industry, held from
2-5 July 2008, in Sapporo, Japan, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s
(CBD) Executive Secretary, Ahmed Djoghlaf, highlighted that around 20% of
domestic animal breeds are at risk of extinction, with an average of one breed
lost each month.

Adding that, of the 7,000 species of plants that have been
domesticated over the history of agriculture, a mere 30 account for 90 % of all
the food that we eat every day, he stressed that reliance on so few plants
makes human populations vulnerable to climatic change, and current extinction
rates makes our position particularly perilous. He said that, “while not caused
solely by the decreases in the number of cultivated species, the current food
crisis is an example of what lays ahead if we continue to allow the loss of
agricultural biodiversity, despite predicted global changes in growing conditions.
Dramatic rises in crop prices could well become a symptom of the unprecedented
loss of agricultural biodiversity and certainly a reflection of its
far-reaching impacts on mankind.” [The message]