Participation in a city food security program may be linked to higher ant alpha- and beta-diversity: an exploratory case from Belo Horizonte, Brazil

This article reports the results of a case study examining the connections between municipal food security policy and biodiversity in the region of Belo Horizonte, a populous city in the heavily fragmented Brazilian cerrado (savannah)/Atlantic forest transition region. Belo Horizonte, through its Secretariat of Food and Nutrition Security (SMASAN), has generated increased food security in the city, in part by economically supporting local small farmers. Farmers’ economic security has been previously linked to their agricultural practices and sustainability; thus, SMASAN’s programs potentially affect biodiversity in the region’s agricultural matrix and rainforest fragments through their work with farmers. In order to examine this dynamic, we compared ground-foraging ant diversity on four SMASAN and three non-SMASAN farms and adjoining forest fragments. Supported by data from farmer interviews, sampling in 2005 and 2006 indicated SMASAN farms had: a) higher alpha and beta diversity and b) potentially greater overlap between species found on-farm and in adjacent forest fragments. This case study may be the first directly linking biodiversity conservation with food security and changes in local food policy institutions, emphasizing the importance of an approach integrating politics and ecology, and the potential for human wellbeing and conservation to go hand-in-hand.