Volume 1, #1 The Benefits of Biodiversity

RAFI presents data from dozens of scientific and trade journals to illustrate the enormous contribution made by farmers and indigenous peoples in the South to the wellbeing of Northern citizens, and/or the economic benefit to industry in the North. A 14 page document.

There is slow, but growing recognition worldwide that agricultural and medicinal plant species - nurtured, selected and bred over millennia by farmers and healers from the South - have yielded, and continue to yield, benefits to industry in the North.

Similarly, there is growing recognition that the knowledge of indigenous peoples worldwide has contributed enormously to the seed and pharmaceutical industries of the North. 

But little concrete evidence is available to illustrate the commercial value of Southern plants, and indigenous knowledge.

In this paper, RAFI has compiled data from dozens of scientific and trade journals, to give an insight into the enormous contribution made by the South to the wellbeing of Northern citizens and/or the economic benefit of Northern corporations.