Our food and agriculture systems today rely too heavily on a very few plant species, a handful of animal species and marine species. Biodiversity is indispensable to food and nutrition security, and to ecosystem sustainability. Traditional resilient crop species are important to diversify our food systems for a healthy life. Globally, more than 820 million people do not have enough to eat and food demand is forecast to increase by 2050. With about 80% of cultivated land in the world, dryland farming plays an important role in global food security. FAO assessed the drylands to cover more than 6 billion hectares, including 1 billion in agro-sylvo-pastoral systems in Africa. Its blueprint for large-scale land restoration based on promoting biological diversity for small-scale farming delivers multiple ecological and socio-economic benefits. It is time for scientific expertise to embrace local knowledge for scaling-up sustainable food and agriculture.