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Most of the world's crops depend on honeybees and wild bees for pollination, so declines in both managed and wild bee populations raise concerns about food security, notes the study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
"We found that many crops are pollination-limited, meaning crop production would be higher if crop flowers received more pollination. We also found that honey bees and wild bees provided similar amounts of pollination overall," said senior author Rachael Winfree, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Managing habitat for native bee species and/or stocking more honey bees would boost pollination levels and could increase crop production."
Pollination by wild and managed insects is critical for most crops, including those providing essential micronutrients, and is essential for food security, the study notes. In the U.S., the production of crops that depend on pollinators generates more than $50 billion a year. According to recent evidence, European honey bees (Apis mellifera) and some native wild bee species are in decline.
Journal Reference:
Crop production in the USA is frequently limited by a lack of pollinators, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0922)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:30PM (3 children)
Hundreds of millions of people on Earth are already hungry. Many of them of downright starving.
Fucking first-world-centric privileged little assholes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:36PM
That is mostly a problem of logistics and local governments and corruption. The secondary issue is the scare mongering around GMO.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2020, @04:52AM (1 child)
You might want citations for the "hundreds of millions" part. I have this (possibly unwarranted) impression that things are going pretty well at the moment. Let me search for "droughts" . . .
Guess you're right - https://www.worldvision.org/hunger-news-stories/africa-hunger-famine-facts [worldvision.org]
That article claims 257 million people in Africa are going hungry. I will note that charitable organizations have at least a minor tendency to exaggerate problems, so maybe it's only 237 million?
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @10:25PM
Charitable organizations are the cause of the problem... What better way to destabilize a continent and prep it for corporations to seize control than to put the local farmers out of work and keep the people poor and dependent on foreign aid?