Our favorite foods might be on the decline due to fewer visits from pollinating insects, according to a recent study. These insects play an essential role in pollination, crucial for 75 percent of the world’s food crops.
However, these pollinators are dwindling in numbers, posing serious risks to global food production.
While major crops like rice and wheat aren’t pollinator-dependent, many nutrient-rich and culturally significant foods need these insects.
Katherine Turo, an ecologist from Rutgers University, emphasizes that summer berries, apples, pumpkins, and other crops requiring insect pollination are at risk.
Few studies have directly measured the impact of pollinator limitations on crop yields. This new research focuses on the number of insect visits to flowers and the resulting crop yields, providing a more realistic picture of the crisis.
The comprehensive study analyzed data from CropPol, an open-source global database on crop pollination, tracking data over three decades for 32 leading commercial crops.
Findings indicate that up to 60 percent of global crops suffer from insufficient pollination, affecting 25 out of 49 crop species, including blueberries, coffee, and apples.
This limitation spans 85 percent of the countries represented in the database, covering all six continents.
However, Turo notes room for optimism, suggesting investments in pollinator management and research could improve crop efficiencies and meet global nutritional needs.
Increasing pollinator visits in low-visitation fields could potentially close yield gaps by 63 percent. Therefore, improving consistency between high- and low-yield fields could alleviate many of the observed yield issues, according to Turo.
Regions with more forest cover within 1 kilometer of crop fields showed slightly less likelihood of pollinator limitation, although no consistent patterns were found, indicating further study is needed.
Rachael Winfree, another Rutgers ecologist, underscores the implications for global food supplies, pointing out that focusing on pollinators could boost agricultural productivity.
However, implementing these changes is challenging because pollinators face numerous threats, including disease, pesticides, shifting seasons, and habitat loss.
By quantifying the role of pollinators, the hope is to underscore their importance to billion-dollar agricultural industries and drive actions to mitigate the threats they face.
This research is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.