This piece from the Financial
Times reviews the causes and implications of a “pollination crisis”
resulting from an insufficient number of bees and other insects. Most fruits
and vegetables and about three-fourths of all crops rely on these pollinators,
which are under severe stress. Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at Sussex
University in Britain, notes that in California, beekeepers that are needed to pollinate
the almond crop are losing nests, tripling prices; in China, apple and pear
farmers use children on stepladders to brush pollen on each flower, as pesticides have
wiped out the bees. Goulson stresses that knowledge of the overall state of the
world’s pollinators is quite limited—“we do not know how many pollinators we
have, nor how their abundance has changed over time”—but is sufficient to
indicate a grave crisis.
What is happening to our bees? The
answer is complicated – but imagine the following. A flu epidemic sweeps the
country, and you catch it. You feel awful but you struggle on, going to the
shops to get food. The shop has closed down, and you have to walk an extra two
miles to find an open shop. Exhausted and shivering, you buy some food and
manage to eat some but it has been poisoned. Not enough poison to kill you if
you were feeling well, but in this state?
It sounds a bit melodramatic, but
it is a pretty good analogy for our poor bees. We have accidentally spread new
parasites and diseases of bees around the world; for example, many bumblebees
in the UK are infected with a gut parasite originally from Asian honeybees,
while honeybees are being ravaged by the Asian Varroa mite. Modern farming has
removed most flowers from the countryside, so pollinators have to travel
further to find nourishment – and the range of foods available is restricted.
Much is contaminated with a cocktail of pesticides; recent studies found up to
35 different pesticides in the food stores of honeybees. Small wonder, then,
that pollinators are not thriving.
Global food production has been
heading in an unsustainable direction for decades. The UN’s Food and
Agriculture Organisation estimates that we will need to double global food
production by 2050 to feed the growing population. We continue to clear
tropical forests to bring more land in to use, and we try to squeeze ever
greater yields from existing land by heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides,
creating vast crop monocultures. Yet our efforts are undermining the ability of
land to produce food. Agricultural practices are causing soils to be rapidly
eroded – washing away in rain or blowing away into the sea – so that 40 per
cent of farmed soils are already degraded, and some estimates suggest many
countries will have little soil left within 60 years. Aquifers used to irrigate
arid soils are fast being depleted. Salt build-up, from poor irrigation
practices, is affecting 320m hectares of agricultural lands – an area the size
of India.
Extreme climate events expected as a result of
build-up of greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause catastrophic crop
failures. Wild fish stocks are being depleted; many have already collapsed.
Species are going extinct at about 1,000 times the natural rate, many of which
have vital roles in recycling nutrients, storing carbon, creating soil,
controlling pests and, of course, pollinating crops. Bees may be canaries in
the coal mine, warning us that we must find ways to produce food without
destroying the environment on which we depend.
* * *
Dave Goulson, “There
is no Plan Bee for when we run out of pollinators,” Financial Times, November 8, 2013
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