Ambiente - Salute - Diritti Umani - Nutrizione - Agricoltura

(...) The global diet relies on a dramatically shrinking number of species, with only 30 crops providing 95 percent of the calories humans consume. (Wheat, rice, and corn alone account for half of all calories.) For that we have to thank modern farming practices, which emphasize a narrow range of high-yield crop strains adapted to industrial agriculture.
Traditional cultures, meanwhile, feast from a far wider spectrum: The Yanomami Indians of Venezuela eat from 418 to 1,400 different species (compared with 75 for Italian university students). Three-quarters of the genetic diversity of food crops was lost in the 20th century, according to the United Nations, and a 1998 audit of seed banks found that more than half the 5,300 food plant species held were represented by a single variety, when there were often hundreds in the wild. (...)

The article:
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200503/food.asp

Bioversity International website:
http://www.bioversityinternational.org/

The book:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v0374r40u0544710/

http://sites.google.com/site/maurizioguidopaoletti/recent-pubblications/minilivestock