Apple and pear farmers in Szechuan, China now use paint brushes to pollinate each flower - intensive farming and pesticides have destroyed the bees. Similar stories are coming from Brazil. Is the US next? According to biologist Dave Goulson:
“Biologists for years have been predicting that we might be facing a pollination crisis, where there are not enough bees and other flower-visiting insects to go around. If this happens yields on crops requiring insect pollination will drop and food prices will rise. About three-quarters of all crops depend to some extent on pollinators... As a specialist in studying wild bees and their conservation, I am embarrassed to admit that we don’t know how many pollinators we have, nor how their abundance has changed over time. Nobody does. There is no monitoring of numbers. We also do not know how many we need to ensure good crop yields...Bees may be the canaries in the coal mine, warning us that we must find ways to produce food without destroying the environment upon which we depend.”
When common resources are not measured, and no-one is accountable they are not managed.
