Introduction Conservation of biodiversity takes place largely in landscapes that are managed for farming and pastoralism. Biodiversity provides not only food and income but also raw materials for clothing, shelter, medicines, breeding new varieties, and performs other services such as maintenance of soil fertility and biota, and soil and water conservation, all of which are essential to human survival.
Rural people use and manage biodiversity in obtaining their livelihoods.
Through generations of innovation and experiment, they have nurtured diversity of plants and animals, either wild or domesticated, and accumulated rich knowledge of the managed biodiversity. The process of learning, experiment and innovation continues throughout the developing world. Much has been written on loss of managed biodiversity under threat from commercial and intensified production, but only limited work has been done on how farmers manage their resources so as to sustain and enhance them. It involves a collaborative effort between scientists and small farmers from across the developing world. Management of agricultural biodiversity is important at various temporal and spatial scales.