Launching Vegetables4Life:
Bold USD $300m fundraising drive will target vegetable biodiversity hotspots worldwide

– 05 December 2025 –

A market trader in Arusha, Tanzania, with bundles of amaranth leaves for sale. Picture by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

A new, ten-year global initiative aiming to raise USD$ 300 million to collect, conserve, and use the vegetable biodiversity that supports healthy diets, resilient farming systems, and future food security is now open for funding from governments, philanthropic organizations, and the private sector.

Led by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) and co-led by the Crop Trust, the Vegetables4Life (V4L) initiative aims to direct global investments towards important but vulnerable vegetable species. It was launched during Crop Diversity Day 2025 in Lima, Peru – one of the year’s most important gatherings of crop conservation experts.

The launch comes at a time of growing international concern about gaps in the global food system, with major global bodies calling for sharp increases in vegetable production and consumption to address poor diets, rising chronic disease, and climate impacts. The EAT–Lancet Commission’s 2025 update report, released last month, noted that global vegetable production would need to rise by 42–48 per cent by 2050 to support healthy, sustainable diets, while The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 reported that two-thirds of young children are deficient in micronutrients and more than 150 million under five remain stunted. According to UNICEF’s 2025 Child Nutrition Report, inadequate vegetable consumption is also driving rising obesity, now the dominant form of malnutrition among children and adolescents worldwide.

Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) highlighted the urgent need to conserve and make better use of crop diversity – including vegetables. Its State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources 2025 report notes that vegetables are under-represented in the world’s genebanks and underfunded in research.

V4L responds to this urgent gap with a bold, coordinated plan to secure and use the world’s most at-risk vegetable diversity to promote healthier diets – particularly among vulnerable children – and support sustainable agriculture. 

 

A wake-up call for action on vegetables

Across the world, vegetables play a crucial role in providing jobs and incomes – particularly for women – diversifying farming systems and supplying essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Yet they remain overlooked in global investment, research and policymaking. As a result, many traditional or underused vegetables are disappearing from fields, forests and local markets as farming systems modernize, and as climate change, land degradation and urban expansion reshape rural landscapes. These vegetables contain valuable traits that can help scientists breed improved varieties capable of tolerating heat, drought, pests and poor soils; many can also be used directly by farmers.

Vegetables4Life will work in a series of biodiversity focus areas or “hotspots” across Africa, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and the Americas – these are places where vegetable diversity is rich yet malnutrition is high. As presenters explained during a second Vegetables4Life session at Crop Diversity Day, these hotspots prioritise the rescue of at-risk wild relatives of vegetable species, while supporting efforts to conserve them in genebanks and ensure they are accessible by a range of users, with the aim of enhancing food security for vulnerable children. 

“It is inspiring to launch Vegetables4Life here in Peru – one of the world’s great centres of vegetable diversity,” said Maarten van Zonneveld, head of genetic resources at WorldVeg. “Globally important crops like chili, tomato, pumpkin and amaranth all trace their origins to this region – so there is no better place to set out on this journey, and no better audience to witness such a launch.”

He continued: “At the same time, we do face real urgency: vegetable diversity is disappearing just when the world needs it most. But with bold ambitions and the right support, we can conserve this diversity and unlock its enormous potential for farmers and consumers everywhere.”

    

Maarten van Zonneveld, head of genetic resources at WorldVeg launches Vegetables4Life during Crop Diversity Day in Lima. The launch also featured a keynote address by Colin Khory (New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) on the importance of vegetables for healthy and sustainable diets) and presentations on vegetable diversity hotspots featuring Sognigbe N’Danikou as one of the presenters).

Seizing global opportunities

V4L places particular emphasis on “opportunity vegetables” – traditional and regionally important vegetable crops that are highly nutritious, adapted to local conditions and which can play a role in diversifying diets and farming systems. Many of these crops thrive in heat, drought or unpredictable rainfall, making them vital for adapting to climate change. By region, these include:

  • Africa: amaranth, jute mallow, hibiscus, cowpea, okra and spider plant.
  • The Americas: chili, tomato, pumpkin, pepper and amaranth.
  • The Pacific: slippery cabbage, pumpkin, amaranth, edible ferns, and snake gourd.
  • Southeast Asia: eggplant, bitter gourd, amaranth, yard-long bean, okra, luffa gourd, Malabar spinach, kangkong and moringa.

By working in 20 biodiversity and malnutrition hotspots in these and other regions, V4L intends to collect and secure local varieties and their wild relatives, improve their conservation in national and international genebanks, and support farmers, researchers and seed suppliers to use them. It anticipates that each hotspot will require approximately USD$ 1.5 million per year for the next ten years, resulting in a fundraising target of USD$ 300 million. This is expected to generate around USD$ 6 billion in economic benefits over the period, along with substantial health, educational and environmental gains, with healthier diets reducing healthcare costs and improving learning outcomes, while more sustainable farming practices help to restore ecosystems and lower the carbon footprint of food production.

“USD$ 300 million sounds like a significant fundraising target  – and it is,” continued van Zonneveld. “But it’s a short-term cost to collect, conserve and put into use the world’s most important and most vulnerable vegetable diversity – the benefits will begin accruing almost immediately, and they are likely to last for generations to come.”

At the World Vegetable Center experimental station in Cotonou, Benin. Pic by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

A farmer checks the leaves of a young jute mallow plant growing in the community of Libga in Northern Ghana. The community has been evaluating accessions of jute mallow conserved in the country’s national genebank as part of the Seeds for Resilience project. Pic by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

A chef at the kitchen of the World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania, with a bunch of amaranth ready for preparation. Picture by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

A global partnership ready for investment

Vegetables4Life is the result of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center award, which recognises projects that have a clear social impact, charitable purpose, and which aim to advance knowledge or promote the well-being of humanity. In 2025, it brought together global experts to examine the critical gaps in vegetable conservation and chart a long-term solution, resulting in the development of the V4L concept.

While V4L does not yet have external funding, its structure and governance are established, and the Crop Trust’s Power of Diversity Funding Facility (PDFF) will enable the initiative to receive financial support from multiple sources in an organised and transparent way.

Once V4L has defined its priority hotspots in detail, it will start developing targeted proposals, with full implementation scheduled for 2026. Discussions are already underway with potential funders, and the first contributions – to support hotspots in SE Asia – are expected soon. 

“Vegetables are delicious, nutritious and crucial for the world’s food security. Conserving the crop diversity of vegetables in genebanks requires stable, predictable funding,” said Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director of the Crop Trust. “Through our partnership with WorldVeg, there is now a clear pathway to support this essential work to secure vegetable biodiversity at a global scale.”

He continued: “With Vegetables4Life, the Crop Trust and WorldVeg aim to take us one step closer to realizing a triple win – a healthy diet, sustainable food production, and a just and equitable food system for all. The Crop Trust’s Power of Diversity Funding Facility supports vegetable conservation. But it holds the potential to be so much more. Together, let’s build on this foundation and secure the future of food.”

 

Jute mallow seed packets conserved at the genebank in the Laboratory of Genetics, Biotechnology and Seed Science the University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Benin. Pic by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

Crop conservation freezers providing long-term storage for accessions at the genebank of the World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania. Picture by Neil Palmer for the Crop Trust.

Key information:

  • Vegetables4Life aims to raise USD$ 300 million over ten years for global vegetable biodiversity.
  • The initiative will identify 20 hotspots worldwide, each combining high biodiversity with high malnutrition.
  • The launch of V4L follows the launch of the African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan in 2024, a WorldVeg-led regional precursor, developed to collect, conserve and use the continent’s vegetable diversity.
  • Vegetables of interest include: chili, tomato, pumpkin, pepper and amaranth, slippery cabbage, jute mallow, okra, spider plant, moringa and gourds.
  • WorldVeg holds the world’s largest public vegetable genebank, with more than 65,000 accessions.
  • The Power of Diversity Funding Facility provides a mechanism for funders to support Vegetables4Life
  • The Crop Trust is an international non-profit dedicated to conserving crop diversity and making it available for use globally.
  • Full implementation of V4L begins in 2026, following hotspot selection in 2025.

Crop Diversity Day is co-hosted by the Crop Trust, the Secretariat of FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), and the International Potato Center (CIP). Its 2025 theme is Preserving for tomorrow: Innovative solutions to strengthen the global genebank system.