China’s Agrobiodiversity: From Rice Terraces To Seed Banks – Analysis

With its extensive and diverse agroecological zones, China ranks among the 12 global hotspots for agricultural biodiversity. This richness—deeply embedded in the country’s diverse landscapes and cultures—has conventionally supported food and nutrition security for a population of over 1.4 billion. However, rapid modernisation, industrial agriculture, and climate change are now significantly pressurising China’s agrobiodiversity, making it challenging to achieve sustainable agriculture and nutrition security. One of the most symbolic examples of China’s agrobiodiversity—developed over the past 1300 years and spread across 16,603 hectares—is the Honghe Hani rice terraces in Yunnan Province. These systems embody a sophisticated form of ecological engineering, refined over generations by the Hani people and fostered through close interaction with their environment. The rice-fish-duck symbiosis depicted below is a circular, integrated, and time-honoured agricultural practice. In this ...