Impending Agricultural Crisis?

UPDATED with more links and info (NOTE: all links to Science magazine are subscription)

This is a topic I have meant to write about for months, but never got around to. But I have been seeing more and more about this recently and things are getting worse.

Roughly one third of our food supply depends on pollination by animals, mostly insects. The primary pollinator in our nation, as well as around the world, is the European honey bee. This single species is responsible for about 80% of pollination in America. Simply put, our food supply largely depends on the bee more than on any other single species...other than ourselves, I guess.

For some years now, the honeybee has been declining. So far there has not been a single clear cause identified for this decline, but the decline has been worrisome and as, of the end of last year, a mite infestation seemed to be one of the primary causes, as well as simple competition with "Africnaized" bees which are not quite as general of pollinators as the "European" variety. (As a side note, as with humans, all commercially important honeybees seem to have originated in Africa, and have spread across the world through three wave of migration out of Africa.)

But now the decline seems to be accelerating with a new phenomenon, starting only last fall, that is being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Entire colonies of bees suddenly die off, with the few survivors suffering from multiple diseases and parasites, suggesting an immune system dysfunction. This immune dysfunction could be the primary cause of the disorder or simply the most dramatic symptom. According to a recent artcle in Science, beekeepers in 26 states have lost up to 50% of their colonies this winter to CCD. Again, this is on top of earlier die offs due to mites and other infections in past years.

Honey prices have gone up due to the die off. The almond industry in particular is sounding the alarm on this because they could fail to meet increasing demand due to lack of pollinators. But these are relatively minor to the economy as a whole. But a third of American (and world) agriculture depends on bees. The collapse of the bee population would mean a collapse in agriculture...which would be HUGELY catastrophic.

For more info on this issue, please go here (most of their links are pdf's) and here.

Beekeepers (any out there among our readers???) are asked to participate in this survey to help monitor the situation. And to find out more about how to help protect our primary pollinator, email km@coevolution.org (the Pollinator Partnership) and ask what you can do in your area (tell them you read about it at Culture Kitchen!).

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