Bye Bye Bees 1

Albert Einstein is supposed to have remarked that “Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.” Honeybees are a principle species of pollinators that work symbiotically with flowering plants transferring pollen resulting in fruit and seed production. The health and wellbeing of species such as the honeybee is therefore vital for sustaining habitats and human societies. 

70% of 124 main crops for human consumption are dependent on pollinators and studies by Gallai et al have attempted to assess the monetary value of pollinators using a bioeconomic approach. They used two main techniques;  assessing the total value of insect pollinated crops and a dependence ratio which calculates the production loss if there is complete loss of pollinators, the economic value of insect pollination service is equal to the corresponding loss of crop value. This is likely to vary among continents and regions due to the many crop species and heterogeneity in agricultural production.

They calculated the economic value of insect pollination for world agriculture at €135billion in 2005 which stands for about 10% of the world value of crops used directly for human food. This percentage is an indicator of the value of pollinator services relative to other factors contributing to agriculture production and therefore could be considered agriculture vulnerability.  They concluded that due to the nature of the agriculture industry (e.g. farmers adapting to pollinator loss by adopting new techniques) and the varied nature of pollinator decline it is difficult to assess the real significance of 10% vulnerability. When looking at this study alone, the fear of bee decline generated by the media seems to be a bit of an exaggeration (Gallai et al. 2008). 

However, global scale studies, particularly those looking to monetise ecosystem services, such as this will never be fully comprehensive.  This study failed to consider the value of pollinators  for seed production necessary for many vegetables grown for human consumption and seeds production for legumes often used to feed cattle. Furthermore, it failed to consider the pollination of plants that are not directly consumed; from wild plants vital to the overall health of ecosystems to biofuels.  In addition, the study principally focused on large scale agri-businesses, small scale farmers are already some of the most vulnerable people and often lack the ability to adapt. 

Sources: 

Gallai et al. 2008. Economic valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture
confronted with pollinator decline. Ecological Economics. 68(1). pp 810-821.