For food companies, chefs and retailers, expand your new product innovation initiatives to include food ingredients that help enhance biodiversity.

For food manufacturers and chefs, introduce your customers to new flavors and food experiences by developing new products with forgotten and underutilized crops and animal species. For retailers, stock and bring exposure to foods that use underutilized ingredients. More diverse ingredients means more opportunities for culinary innovation. See our “Expand Your Food Horizons” ingredient page for ideas on foods to explore.

Promoting biodiversity will require additional investment to enable farmers, manufacturers, and supply chains to move toward more biodiverse practices.

Biodiverse brands such as Kuli Kuli, Yolélé, Kaibae, Believe in Bambara, and The Jackfruit Company, for example, are helping to draw awareness and funding to the production infrastructures that their products are built upon. For many of these kinds of crops, investment in supply chain infrastructure is crucial.

Evaluate your existing supply chain to understand how it impacts biodiversity and identify areas for improvement.

While there is currently no single standard to measure biodiversity, initiatives such as Biodiversity International’s Agrobiodiversity Index and TEEBAgriFood’s measurement framework are examples of measurement approaches. Look to these resources as a starting point to determine the best way to measure.

Tell the story of biodiversity to your customers by showing them how sustainable, biodiverse foods can be uniquely delicious discoveries.

Sweetgreen and Row 7 Seed’s campaign to promote the Koginut Squash, a new squash bred for flavor by Row 7, is a great example of how to make biodiversity sexy. Their campaign included placement on sweetgreen’s menu, influencer dinners, and even a Times Square billboard, all receiving critical acclaim from major media.