JIM RICHARDSON

Feeding the growing population of planet Earth will challenge our ability to grow enough food on the remaining land. Documenting the great environmental impact of agriculture. Photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Extinction threatens many species of wildlife on Earth, But our world is also facing another, different extinction: that of our heritage of domesticated livestock and crops. Without them and their rich biodiversity built up over 10,000 years of domestic breeding, we face great danger in feeding the world’s growing population -- with potentially catastrophic results. Generations of painstaking breeding has produced supreme adaptations which allowed mankind to prosper in wildly differing environments and improbable places. Intensive agriculture (and its modern incarnation, industrial agriculture) striving for high yields inevitably casts aside diversity in favor of maximum uniformity and production. The danger comes when new diseases or climactic disasters threaten our food supply. Then the forgotten diversity becomes mankind’s last lifeline. And the possible loss would be more than just economic, but the loss one of mankind’s greatest legacies. Around the world, scientists and farmers alike are racing to save our domesticated heritage for future generations depending on them to feed our ballooning world population. This is a story of that shared heritage in peril, of the people working to save it, and of the richness and beauty that has been entrusted to us.

Seed banks around the world protect mankind's heritage of domesticated plants that provide our food. Images for National Geographic, including the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, and other agricultural seed banks the United States, Ethiopia, and the United Kingdom. Photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Seeds from Kew Millennial Seed Bank, London, part of Jim Richardson's photography of Feeding the Planet.

Our world depends on our farmers. Even today most of our food is grown on small farms of five acres or less. These images were produced for the May 2014 issue of National Geographic Magazine where we covered the critical issue of feeding nine billion people by the year 2050. Photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Photographs of women farmers. Over half of the farmers in the world, who grow our food, are women, yet the lag behind in recognition, financial aid and research assistance. Photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Soil is the essential resource that makes our worldwide food supply possible. It is threatened by erosion, degradation and pollution. We should know more about it, but even after thousands of years of human agriculture, centuries of religious and cultural reverence as the source of creation, and decades of scientific research, soil remains a mystery. The vast majority of us never give soil a second thought. Our story for National Geographic sought to make these connections, to take readers down into the soil, to make it the actor in our narrative in ways that make soil and its workings a thing of beauty and wonder.

Farmers are partners with their soils. These portraits of farmers around the world show them with the soils they depend upon, photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Soil fungi, part of the microbiota essential for the function of healthy soil, photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.

Prairie grass roots seen in profiles that show how far they an grow into the soil to survive drought, photographed by National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.