About one-third of the world’s land surface is used for farming, a fact that bears important implications for
biodiversity. In Europe, for instance, an estimated 50 percent of all wild species are reliant on agricultural
habitats, while agricultural productivity often depends on the presence or absence of particular species. Despite
this close coupling, surprisingly little is known about the status and evolution of farmland biodiversity. A team
of European and African researchers, hoping to fill this gap in information, recently invented and piloted a new
toolbox called the BioBio indicator set, which measures 23 different instances of biodiversity across a variety
of farm types and scales in Europe. Applications were also tested in Tunisia, Ukraine, and Uganda, where they
proved a feasible starting point for adaptation to the agricultural context of different countries
