You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity.

You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity.

To many people, 'biodiversity' is almost synonymous with the word 'nature,' and 'nature' brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species.

Not all of them, but certainly there's some really, really dramatic differences among apples. And what you learn if you have that number of varieties is you learn which Apple is good for which purpose. So I have a favorite apple for apple pie. It's called Bramley Seedling. It's a old British Apple. I blend a lot of these apples together that make apple cider every year. It's a great hobby, but it's, you know, it takes some time. And it can be frustrating when the Japanese beetles or the gypsy moths come.

The coldest growing seasons of the future [will be] hotter than the hottest of the past. Is agriculture adapted to that? I don't know. Can fish play the piano?

Loss of genetic diversity in agriculture is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction--to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify the environment as we have done with agriculture is to destroy the complex interrelationships that hold the natural world together. Reducing the diversity of life, we narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more precarious.

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.