Building more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems means rethinking how we consume, produce, and safeguard agrobiodiversity that can benefit the planet and secure access to nutritious food for all. This was the purpose of the 2021 Second International Agrobiodiversity Congress, convening scientists, Indigenous Peoples, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to share and advance research, nature-positive solutions, and policies. Congress organizers set out to showcase agrobiodiversity's role in positively transforming food systems, present solutions and business opportunities to enhance multi-stakeholder collaborations, and reinforce the commitments made during international events of 2021. The take-home messages from this Congress support the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit to chart a path of concrete actions that can deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Feeding and nourishing an increasing world population in the face of slow progress on eradicating malnutrition, structural inequalities, ongoing crises, and environmental degradation, demands transformative policy changes for more diverse, resilient, and sustainable food systems [1]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed clearly that climate change has impacted food security in terms of availability, access, utilization, and stability, through rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and higher frequency of extreme weather events [2,3]. The overdependence on a shrinking list of species, breeds, strains, and varieties puts biodiversity at risk of rapid decline and extinction, and makes food systems more susceptible to pest and disease outbreaks, lower soil quality, and unstable yields [4, 5, 6]. The recognition that biodiversity is fundamental to agricultural production, food security, nutrition, and environmental conservation was already a crucial cause to set up the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources in Food and Agriculture in 1983. The entry into force of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture marked the commitment of the global community to a freestanding convention directed at achieving internationally agreed objectives regarding the conservation of plant genetic resources [7,8].

The 2021 Rome Manifesto―adopted at the Second International Agrobiodiversity Congress―calls for “Using and conserving agrobiodiversity [as in the wealth of plants, animals, and micro-organisms that compose our food systems] to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”