'Pollination crisis' hitting India's

 vegetable farmers

Continue reading the main storyFalling vegetable yields could have a detrimental impact on people's diets, Indian researchers warn

Indian researchers said there was a "clear indication" that pollinator abundance was linked to productivity.A decline in pollinating insects in India is resulting in reduced vegetable yields and could limit people's access to a nutritional diet, a study warns.

They added that the loss of the natural service could have a long-term impact on the farming sector, which accounts for almost a fifth of the nation's GDP.

Globally, pollination is estimated to be worth £141bn ($224bn) each year.

The findings were presented at a recent British Ecological Society meeting, held at the University of Leeds.

Each year, India produces about 7.5 million tonnes of vegetables. This accounts for about 14% of the global total, making the nation second only to China in the world's vegetable production league table.

Lack of data

Despite the concern, no study had been done to assess directly the scale of the decline in natural pollinators, explained Parthiba Basu, from the University of Calcutta's Ecology Research Unit.

"The ideal situation would have been if we were able to compare the overall pollinator abundance over the years, but that kind of data was just not available," he told BBC News.

Instead, his team compared the yields of pollinator-dependent crops with pollinator-independent crops.

"Data shows that the yields of pollinator-independent crops have continued to increase," Dr Basu said. "On the other hand, pollinator-dependent crops have levelled off."

He explained that certain crops did not depend on insects for pollination, including cereals. Instead, the plants used other mechanism - such as relying on the wind to carry the pollen.

However, many vegetables - such as pumpkin, squash, cucumber and gherkin - were reliant on insects, such as bees.

He added that the fall in yield per hectare was against the backdrop of a greater area being turned over to crop production each year.

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The exact cause for the decline of pollinators, especially bees, still remains a mystery

• Research money has beekeepers buzzing

In an attempt to identify an underlying cause for the pollinator decline, the team is carrying out a series of field experiments, comparing conventional agriculture with "ecological farming".

Defined as "a farming system that aims to develop an integrated, humane, environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural production system", ecological farming is almost a hybrid of conventional and organic farming, looking to capitalise on returns from modern farming methods as well as drawing on natural ecological services, such as pollination.

Dr Basu said: "There is an obvious indication that within the ecological farming setting, there is pollinator abundance. This method typically provides the habitats for natural pollinators - this is the way forward."

He added that if the team's findings were extrapolated, this would offer a "clear indication" that India was facing a decline in natural pollinators, as ecological farming was only practiced on about 10-20% of the country's arable land.

Figures show that agriculture accounts for almost one-fifth of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), compared with the global average of just 6%. The sector also provides livelihoods for more than half of India's 1.2 billion population.

Troubling times

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that of the slightly more than 100 crop species that provide 90% of food supplies for 146 countries, 71 are bee-pollinated, primarily by wild bees, and a number of others are pollinated by other insects.

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“Start Quote

We - not only in India, but in other parts of the world - do not really know what is happening to natural pollinator populations”

Dr Parthiba BasuUniversity of Calcutta

In order to gain a clear insight into the scale of the global problem, the FAO has established the International Pollinators Initiative, which includes a project involving seven nations (India is among them) with the aim of identifying practices and building capacity in the management of pollination services.

In a 2007 assessment of the scientific data on the issue, the UN Environment Programme observed: "Any loss in biodiversity is a matter of public concern, but losses of pollinating insects may be particularly troublesome because of the potential effects on plant reproduction and hence on food supply security."

Dr Basu said food security was unlikely to be the main consequence facing India.

"There has been a debate within India about this, but most of the cereal crops are not pollinator dependent, so if there is a pollination crisis it is not going to affect food security as such.

"What is going to be affected is nutritional security."

The concept of food security was first established by a FAO committee in 1983. Nutritional security was soon added as a key pillar to ensure "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life".

Dr Basu said that vegetables such as pumpkins, squash, cucumber, and gherkins were "quite substantial" in terms of delivering necessary nutrients to the population.

"But there are many other vegetable crops that are eaten by people who are around the poverty level, so-called minor vegetable crops like eggplant, for which is there is no or very little data," he explained.

About a quarter of India's population is believed to live below the poverty level, which - under the UN's Millennium Development Goals - refers to people who live on less than US$1 a day.

Uncertain times

In industrialised nations, such as the US and in Europe, many farms employ the services of commercial hives to pollinate fruit trees and food crops, and ensure they harvest adequate yields.

But Dr Basu said the use of domesticated bees in this context was not widespread in South Asia.

"There are honey farmers, but using hives in the field to pollinate crops is not at all common in India," he said.

"That is why a lot of the political noise about a global pollination crisis came from the US and Europe, because their managed/domesticated bee population was declining."

In 2007, about one third of the US domesticated bee population was wiped out as a result of a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), with some commercial hive owners losing up to 90% of their bees.

The exact cause remains a mystery, and last year a number of UK agencies - including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) - began a £10m project to help identify the main threat to bees and other insect pollinators.

A number of possible causes have been suggested, including the misuse of pesticides, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the spread of parasites and diseases.

Dr Basu said that as a result of his team's field experiments, it was clear that India too was experiencing a decline.

However, he cautioned: "There are many kinds of natural pollinators. As a result, we - not only in India, but in other parts of the world - do not really know what is happening to natural pollinator populations."

Irish Food gone

Bee decline 'may hit food crops'

Swift action is needed "to halt the bee decline"

Food production in Northern Ireland could be hit by the decline in the wild bee population, a leading beekeeper has said.
Three of the UK's 25 species are already extinct and more face the same fate unless fast action is taken.
Jim Fletcher of the Ulster Beekeepers' Association said it had been a very bad spring for the bees.
"It was a very bad April and May and the bees have not been able to forage as they require," he said.
"The bumble bees have had problems with late flowering and the queens haven't had the energy to build big nests for the production of their workers."
The bee problem had been ongoing for several years and was partly down to people having "nice tidy gardens, fields and hedgerows", said Mr Fletcher, who has about 500,000 bees in his County Down orchard.
"It means there are no wild places for the bees to nest and for the bumble bees to produce their colonies."
A tiny mite had decimated the wild bee population in Northern Ireland, he said.
"This is to such an extent that we haven't got sufficient bees to pollinate the major fruit producing crops."
Bees help to pollinate every flowering plant.
"The possibility is that if we do not take sufficient care, that we may run into problems with food production."
Mr Fletcher advised people to "leave a few wild corners in their garden" to help the bees.
'Falling bee numbers'
Ulster Unionist environment spokesman Sam Gardiner called on all gardeners to grow more traditional local plants "to help reverse the decline in the bee population".
"Bees perform a vital role in the pollination of plants and are vital to eco-systems. Without bees, many native species of plants will disappear and this will have a knock-on effect on other species," he said.
"Many crops depend on bees for pollination and some, such as broad, field and runner beans are heavily dependent on them. Without the insects there would be little or no crop to harvest."
A new organisation - the Bumblebee Conservation Trust - has been launched with the aim of halting falling bee numbers.
Enthusiasts behind the trust, based at Stirling University, have urged as many people as possible to get involved.
As part of its conservation work, the organisation is encouraging the public to plant wildflowers, which provide nectar and pollen for bees and other wildlife.

Bees and flowers decline

Bees and flowers decline in step

See the bees

Diversity in bees and wild flowers is declining together, at least in Britain and the Netherlands, research shows. Scientists from the two countries examined records kept by enthusiasts dating back more than a century.
They write in the journal Science that habitat alterations, climate change and modern industrial farming are possible factors in the linked decline.
There is a chance, they say, that the decline in pollinating bees could have detrimental effects on food production.
"The economic value of pollination worldwide is thought to be between £20bn and £50bn ($37bn and $91bn) each year," said Simon Potts from the University of Reading, UK, one of the scientists involved.
While declines in Britain and the Netherlands might not indicate a global trend, the team says, it is an issue deserving serious future research.
Costs of specialism
Study leader Koos Biesmeijer from the UK's University of Leeds is not the first biologist to note the value of amateur enthusiasts to British conservation studies, and will not be the last.
"We have relied here on records kept by enthusiasts; just like bird-watchers keep records of bird-sightings, they keep records of bees and hoverflies and plants," he told the BBC News website.
"In the UK, insect records come from the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society (BWars) and the Hoverfly Recording Scheme (HRS), while in Holland the Dutch Entomological Society does something similar.

The ultimate drivers are changes in our landscapes; intensive agriculture, extensive use of pesticides, drainage, nitrogen deposition Koos Biesmeijer Pesticides blame for bee fall

"The records go back even into the last part of the 19th Century, and then some of these enthusiasts have gone back into the scientific literature and verified records." From these records comes a picture of reducing diversity among bees and wild flowering plants.
Bee species which rely on certain plants, and plants which rely on certain bees, have fared worse; more flexible species of both have done better.
In Britain, bee species which have increased since 1980 are those which were already common before.
The researchers also looked at hoverflies, and found a mixed picture, with diversity remaining roughly constant in Britain but appearing to increase marginally in the Netherlands.
Hoverflies do pollinate plants, but are less choosy than many bee species, and do not depend so directly on nectar to feed their young.
Overall, plants which pollinate via wind or water appear to be spreading, while those which rely on insects decline.
Holistic handling
If the diversity of bees and plants is decreasing, one question is: which declined first?
This study cannot provide an answer, though it appears the fates of both are intertwined; but the root causes of the decline are clear, Dr Biesmeijer argues.
"The ultimate drivers are changes in our landscapes; intensive agriculture, extensive use of pesticides, drainage, nitrogen deposition.
"All of these factors favour subsets of plants and subsets of bees.
"And if you want to prevent them you have to look at the ecosystem level, protecting the habitat and the groups of species."
Where habitats have been restored, for example under agro-environment schemes, bee and plant diversity has sometimes started to re-emerge, he said.
While such changes may have significant impacts nationally, the team points out that the environments of Britain and the Netherlands, with their high population densities and long histories of agriculture, contain two of the least "natural" landscapes on Earth.
Other countries, with a greater proportion of natural habitat, may not show the same declining trend, they say; but given the importance of bees for pollination, they suggest it would be worth finding out.

bees going why

Help call for vanishing honeybees

Bees have been hit by disease, climate change and pesticide use

Britain's honeybees are disappearing at an "alarming" rate, yet the government is taking "little interest" in the problem, a group of MPs has said.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says bees, vital for pollinating crops, are worth £200m a year to the economy.
It wants Defra to spend more money on research into bee health and make registration compulsory for beekeepers.
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said £10m had been earmarked to analyse the decline of pollinators, including bees.
But the PAC wants the government to ring-fence that money for honeybees alone and not allow it to be diluted by looking at other pollinating insects.
'Colonies lost'
The government says bee numbers have fallen by up to 15% in the last two years, in part because agricultural changes have reduced the availability of the wildflowers they depend on for food.
Disease, climate change and pesticide use have also been blamed for the decline.

Honeybees and other pollinators are absolutely vital to producing our food Environment Secretary Hilary Benn

Chairman of the PAC, Edward Leigh said: "Honeybees are dying and colonies are being lost at an alarming rate."
Given their value to the economy, he said it was "difficult to understand why Defra has taken so little interest in the problem up to now".
Registration is currently voluntary for beekeepers, but the PAC says making it compulsory would allow Defra to deliver advice on bee husbandry to far more people.
Mr Benn said: "Honeybees and other pollinators are absolutely vital to producing our food.
"Defra is providing financial backing for a £10m research initiative into pollinator decline, including honey bees, with decisions on projects to be made in the coming months."
The British Beekeepers Association has backed the PAC's call for research spending to be ring-fenced