SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Agriculture's dependence on pollinators, including both wild and domesticated bees, has increased fourfold since the 1960s. A recent study of these pollinators found that they provide up to $577 billion a year of crops, half of which comes from wild pollinators. These ratios underline the severity of their collapsing numbers. More than a third are facing extinction.
Gemma Cranston, head of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership team that participated in the study, warned that "less than half the companies sampled know which of the raw materials they source depend on pollinators", adding that there needs to be more research to get the full picture.
Source:
Plight of the bees hits unaware businesses
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Plight of the Bees Hits Unaware Businesses
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 25 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:44PM (11 children)
The real question is this: Is this ever-collapsing part of the labor force showing up in the bottom line? Is the market converting the death of these bees into an economic signal that cannot be ignored by anyone (e.g., is the price of downstream commodities rising inordinately)?
If no, then why not? Governmental price caps? Why is the signal being lost in the noise?
That's the real question.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:57PM (2 children)
The signal is being lost in the noise, because to many businesses are insulated from upstream suppliers. Face it, we're talking food here. Restaurants, institutional kitchens, and home makers alike, are insulated from the production of food products. How many Americans have ever processed their own meat, even in small quantities? The only animals they have ever killed, were dogs, or squirrels that ran into traffic. If they've ever cultivated a plant, it was likely a flower on the patio, or a little shrub in the yard. The only people getting the signal, are those people who are directly affected. Bee keepers, farmers, direct purchasers of agricultural products, and maybe some crafts people who use beeswax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:31PM (1 child)
Uh, wow. Way to miss the point. I believe GP was trying to ask why colony collapse disorder (syndrome?) hasn't made the price of food go up. Perhaps GP meant to demonstrate that the article is pointless environmentalist crap. Then I imagine he'll use whatever response to suggest that the reason environmentalist concerns aren't addressed is market distortion due to a violently imposed monopoly.
Because if we implemented anarcho-capitalism, we'd be living in a utopia! (And I suppose GP figures he'd get to marry some girl children. If only we didn't have a violently imposed monopoly!)
There. Hopefully that gets to the bottom of Mr. VIM's point so we can move on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:38PM
Hold fast, fellow AC. Don't look away from the Truth.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:47PM (4 children)
What I have read is that the cost is essentially being borne by beekeepers who are able at some cost to reproduce colonies by fission with the purchase of a new queen: " rel="url2html-7104">https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-the-bee-pocalypse/
I have zero personal experience and can't comment as to the accuracy of that information.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
Are they being subsidized by the Government?
Or, are they just Angels? Something doesn't make sense.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:24PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
Beekeepers certainly are trying to keep their hives healthy, and it is possible to fission a new hive, but you can't just buy new queens if the queens don't exist. Apparently, there are methods available to artificially stimulate queen production, but it's definitely real work.
One other aspect of all this: Farmers growing bee-pollenating plants sometimes contract with beekeepers to bring their bees to that particular field. The beekeepers have been having to be very vigilant about avoiding pesticides thought to be related to colony collapse, including sometimes testing the crops themselves to make sure that the contract won't kill their bees. The cost of that vigilance of course gets passed on to the farmers, which in turn gets somewhat reflected in crop prices, which in turn gets somewhat reflected at the grocery store.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:19AM
Hives normally overproduce queens, so that's not the real problem. The problem is keeping the workers alive. This probably means keeping them away from persistent insecticides. These may or may not directly kill off the bees, but they weaken them and make the hives subject to infection by mites.
So what you need to do is raise your new hives in an area free of pesticides...which usually translates as "broad spectrum insecticides". This is becoming increasingly difficult, as bees do not willingly contain themselves to a small area, and pesticides are increasingly becoming persistent, and even spreading in the water supplies. You might also look into the causes of amphibian declines...multiple pesticides each at a sub-critical dose can have strongly potentiated effects.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:42PM (2 children)
Supply chain signal propagation is notoriously slow. There's a common introductory business game (one example [1]), where everyone splits up into a bunch of teams to simulate the various parts of the supply chain (retailers, warehouse, manufacturer, etc), the teams pass around cards to send signals about supply/demand, and you play it for a few rounds. The supply chain responds very slowly to changes in supply/demand and screws everything up.
It's like global warming; by the time the signals have appeared, the horse has not only left the barn, but has been caught and sold into someone else's barn.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game [wikipedia.org]
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)
When all you're doing is relaying information about supply and demand, then of course it will screw up; that's why socialism always devolves into dysfunctional breadlines.
However, people don't fuck around with money.
They will pass a burden on as quick as they get it, unless there is some strange, distorting force at play, and it's that change in the exchange of money (not information about supply and demand) which will cause an economy to re-organize itself.
Damn. This is another reason to be wary of MBAs.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 19 2018, @06:44PM
That strange, distorting force is called latency, and even very simple systems, such as a robot using gyro sensor input to walk, can experience negative emergent effects from latency. The larger and more complex the system, the greater the effect, and the global economy is a pretty big and complex system.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!