Data or statistical facts on the situation and perspectives of agri-food systems and the impact of policies
20 million people in farm households in developing countries are growing and consuming biofortified crops according to HarvestPlus (Bouis & Saltzman, 2017).
22 billion dollars is estimated as the potential annual economic value of traditional agricultural knowledge of Latin America applied to bioeconomy and sustainable development, including domestication techniques, cultivation, and use of native species (Velásquez, A., 2025).
38% of global agrobiodiversity is found in Latin America, a region that has contributed fundamental crops such as corn, potato, cocoa, tomato, avocado, and many others to global food, constituting a strategic asset to face climate change (Velásquez, A., 2025).
75% of the genetic diversity of traditional Latin American crops has been lost in the last century, evidencing the importance of germplasm banks and in-situ conservation strategies to preserve adaptation options to climate change (Velásquez, A., 2025).
5,000 years of artificial selection have been necessary to develop the main variants of food crops we know today, highlighting the patient work of generations of farmers to adapt plants to specific conditions (Velásquez, A., 2025).
Approximately 9,000 years has the domestication process of Teosinte from Mexico and Central America until becoming the corn we know today, thanks to the systematic selection work by Mesoamerican indigenous peoples (Velásquez, A., 2025).
8,000 years old are the earliest evidences of avocado use in Mesoamerica, with archaeological evidence of its food and ritual importance in pre-Incan cultures from approximately 1500 B.C. in South America (Velásquez, A., 2025).
190 thousand million metric tons annually reach the volume of international corn trade, a cereal that evolved from teosinte thanks to domestication by the Aztecs and other indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America (Velásquez, A., 2025).
7,000 germplasm accessions of Andean potato are preserved at the International Potato Center, with an estimated 4,000+ Andean varieties being edible, constituting an important treasure of world agrobiodiversity (Velásquez, A., 2025).
Between 7000 and 8000 years B.C. date the records of the origin of avocado in Mexico and Central America, being one of the crops with the greatest archaeological documentation in the American continent (Velásquez, A., 2025).
