Evidence-based collaborative approaches need to be applied to conservation as a million animal and plant species are being pushed to the brink of extinction and fish stocks fall globally. Scientific food systems help biodiversity, livelihoods in many ways. But how? Our experience in Bangladesh was based on a ‘food systems’ approach which identifies solutions that minimize the competing priorities between different parts of the food system: from production to conservation and nutrition. This write up illustrated how scientific food systems help biodiversity, livelihoods.