Globalization of agriculture

The loss of genetic diversity of many crop plants and domesticated animals under market and commercial pressures to maximize productivity and profit.

Many varieties and breeds, often evolved over centuries of local selection, have desirable features that adapt them to particular local environments, resist specific diseases or environmental extremes, or give them unique features, but that do not lend themselves to mass marketing.

Pressures for the globalization of agriculture are eliminating much of traditional diversity while the future of sustainable agriculture may well lie with a much greater level of adaptation to local conditions in order to maximize all forms of productivity as well as a wider range of environmental services. Excessive globalization today could destroy much of the potential for better agriculture tomorrow.