File:Biodiversity Loss and Enclosure of Living Organisms.png

English: The rise of agribusiness firm dominance in agriculture has led erosion of biodiversity, including that of food crops.

For decades, agribusiness corporations have amassed seed stock through acquisitions and mergers, thereby removing the seeds and their inherent genetic resources from the commons into the firms’ private inventories. Such activity reduces the amount of crops available for cultivation as well as shrinking the gene pool from which plant breeders can source genes for desired traits for nutrition, pest resistance, drought tolerance, etc.

Additionally, the dominating position of agribusiness firms in the food system is fortified by intellectual property protections on seed patents, strict licensing agreements, and biotechnology, like genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and gene editing.

The confluence of such market trends, legal instruments, and technologies poses great threats to food security. It encourages bioprospecting, biopiracy, and threatens food sovereignty and seed sovereignty. It greatly depletes sources of food for present-day populations and posterity. It restricts access to the most basic elements of food cultivation. It creates inequity and dependency on the firms.

This image seeks to illustrate the inverse relationship between corporate domination and biodiversity in agricultural systems such as the food system. As large agribusiness firms increase their dominance in agricultural systems, genetic resources become more endangered and subject to privatization. Conversely, the momentum of the seed sovereignty, seed rematriation, and "free the seed" movements on regional and global levels increases genetic resources available in food systems and restores biodiversity.