Earth Day: Urban farmers provide food and biodiversity for growing cities

This article posts during GLF 2014. See in English | Espanol
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With growing urban populations, finding new models for farming is crucial. Photo: Otim Joseph, Uganda

Bioversity International is featured on Food Tank’s 2014 Earth Day list.

For this year’s Earth Day, Food Tank highlights influential individuals and organizations who are working to promote urban agriculture and encourage investment in growing cities. Earth Day is an important opportunity to highlight solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.

Food Tank lists Bioversity International alongside The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, a key partner as Bioversity International gears up for the global Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy.

“As we, and specifically, our food system go through challenges such as agricultural intensification, rapid population growth, urbanization and climate change, the relationships between sustainability, agriculture, environment and nutrition change. Bioversity International’s scientists aim to understand these relationships to attain sustainable global food and nutrition security,” says M. Ann Tutwiler, Director General of Bioversity International.

As described in the blog post, according to the UN, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and by 2050 some 6.3 billion people will be living in urban areas. In addition, there are at least one billion urban farmers and gardeners around the world, providing food and nutrition to poor and wealthy consumers alike.

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