Agriculture US
John LaRose Jr. John LaRose Jr.
shared this article 5 years ago
Topics: Agriculture US, Agriculture Global, Beekeeping, Fruit, Sustainability, Almonds, Climate Change, Regenerative Agriculture,

"By Ajit Niranjan Coronavirus lockdowns that keep farmers from fields and suppliers from markets are restricting another cornerstone of the agriculture industry: bees. Responsible for pollinating about a third of the plants we eat, bees are in short supply and their numbers are declining globally. In large, food-exporting countries like the U.S. and China, there are too few local bees to pollinate crops — so beekeepers truck hives thousands of kilometers to pollinate fields. Now, travel restrictions to halt the spread of the coronavirus are hurting the pollination industry by keeping bees at home. They are also stopping some beekeepers from feeding their hives, grounding flights that could import bees from abroad, and making it harder to hire seasonal workers to transport them, said Etienne Bruneau of Apimondia, the international federation of beekeepers. Some farmers "arrive in the [pollinating] season without bees and nobody to help them."

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