Where do you live? In a city? In a village? In the country? Why should you care about biodiversity?

No matter where you live, we all depend on food, air, and water to thrive. These three basic requirements can only come from an ecosystem with a lot of biodiversity. Ecosystems come in many sizes and shapes: from a field to a stream to an ocean to the entire planet! The word ecosystem is used to describe living things and their environment. An ecosystem made up of many different and connected parts is said to be biodiverse (which means having many different kinds of living things).

In a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem, a myriad of organisms work together to recycle air, water, and nutrients through a shifting balance of helping and competing. If biodiversity is reduced it can be hard (or impossible) for the ecosystem to repair itself. There are many human activities that can lead to a loss of biodiversity within an ecosystem. Two examples of these are:

• Unintentionally killing bees (necessary pollinators) while using pesticide to kill farming pests
• Destroying healthy rainforest habitat (which is necessary for the oxygen we breathe and for environmental cooling) by clear-cutting rainforest to make fields for growing soybeans or raising cattle.

The good news is that we can help build a more lush and fruitful world by thinking about biodiversity and increasing it where we can through the food choices we make. Here are a few tips:

• Eat a really diverse diet so farmers are encouraged to grow diverse crops.
• Eat foods grown in this season, and eat foods that are grown close by. (Transportation requires lots of fuel and produces lots of pollution.)
• Look for labels from organic growers - because organic systems work with natural systems and aim to enhance rather than reduce biodiversity.

You can’t have good food, clean air and clean water without a biodiverse ecosystem. These small changes to the way you eat, when viewed collectively, can contribute to a healthier, more resilient planet. And that matters to all of us.