Under threat ... a honey bee.
Under threat ... a honey bee. Photo: Orlando Chiodo
LONDON: Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees.
These foods provide 35 per cent of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying - or being killed - at a disturbing pace.
The crisis of ''colony collapse disorder'' has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the United Nations index of food prices hits an all-time high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.
The agri-business lender Rabobank said the number of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30-35 per cent from a historical norm of 10 per cent. The rate is 20 per cent or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia.
Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), said that ''if the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live''.
Such ''apocalyptic scenarios'' are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat and rice are all pollinated by wind.
However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, eggplants, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa.
This is the fastest-growing and most valuable part of the global farm economy. Between 80 and 90 per cent of pollination comes from domesticated honey bees. Moths and butterflies lack the range to penetrate large fields. The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the ''most extreme'' imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90 per cent.
''Farmers have managed to produce with relatively fewer bee colonies up to this point, and there is no evidence of agricultural yields being affected. The question is how much further this situation can be stretched,'' the report says.
Rabobank said US bee colonies were shrinking even before colony collapse disorder struck because cheap imports of Asian honey had undercut US hives.
China has its own problems. Pesticides used in pear orchards wiped out bees in parts of Sichuan in the 1980s. Crops are now pollinated by hand using feather brushes, a laborious process, as one bee colony can pollinate up to 300 million flowers a day. Germany, France and Italy have banned some pesticides, especially neonicotinoids (as in tobacco) that harm the memories of bees.
Rabobank calls for a step-change in the global response, and in the meantime for tougher rules so that beekeepers do not have to fight alone, starting with curbs on pesticide use in daylight hours when bees are foraging.
Apian atrophy is a more immediate threat than global warming, and can be solved, yet has barely made it on to the policy radar screen. This is surely a misjudgment.
Einstein was not always wrong.