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11 Foods We Would Lose Without Pollinators

by ChelseyMohr Posted on June 20, 2016

We all know honey comes from bees. Have you ever connected other foodsyou eat with the fact that they only exist because they’re pollinated by bees and other creatures?

It’s an important connection to make, considering just how threatened bees, butterflies, birds, beetles and otherimportant pollinators are. The threats come from pollution, climate change, habitat destruction and use of toxic pesticides and herbicides. But maybe the biggest threat is ignorance of how essential these creatures are to the web of life as well as our own food chain.

The Whites House has acknowledged the importance of pollinators not only to America’s food securitybut to the U.S. economy. “Honeybees enable the production of at least 90 commercially grown crops in North America,” says the White House. Globally, 87 of 115 leading food crops depend on animal pollinators and contribute 35 percent of global food production. What that means is, pollinators contribute more than $24 billion to the U.S. economy. Not only do pollinators help keep us fed; they also help sustain our prosperity.

Here’s just one example of the impact pollinators have on what we eat and how well we do. Almonds are almost exclusively pollinated by honey bees. California’s almond industry, just the almonds, require pollination help from about 1.4 million beehives (not 1.4 million individual bees, the thousands of bees that live in each hive). But as bee colonies are collapsing, they’re taking their toll on the almonds and other plants they pollinate. Beekeepers in the U.S. have collectively lost an estimated 10 million beehives at an approximate current value of $200 each, driving up food prices but, more importantly, potentially putting more than a third of our food system in danger.

National Pollinator Week was unanimously designated by the U.S. to raise awareness about the urgent need to raise awareness about declining populations of pollinators. The original event was held in June 2007. It has now grown into an international celebration managed by the Pollinator Partnership and supported by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior. This year, it will be celebrated June 20-June 27, 2016.

In honor of the 2016 Pollinator Week, here are 11 foods we would lose if pollinators weren’t around to do their job. Note that the list includes a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

Apples (and all kinds of other tree fruits, including peaches, apricots, plums, lemons, limes and cherries)

Strawberries (as well as elderberries, blackberries, raspberries and cranberries)

Onions

Avocados

Green Beans (and many otherbeans, including adzuki, kidney and lima beans)

Coffee

Sunflower Oil (and other oils, including palm, safflower and sesame)

Tomatoes (plus cucumbers)

Grapes

Cauliflower (plus cabbage, broccoli, turnips and Brussels sprouts)

Beets

Want to do something to protect pollinators and the foods you love? Sign this petition to protect pollinators from toxic pesticides.

Related:

Cause of Colony Collapse Disorder: YouThis Young Entrepreneur Wants YOU to Help Save the Bees
10 Health Benefits of Honey

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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11 Foods We Would Lose Without Pollinators

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The Almond Board Is Now Advertising on NPR Stations

by RoslynCranswick Posted on July 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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I recently heard a spot on KQED, San Francisco’s NPR affiliate radio station, that caught my attention. “Support for KQED comes from the Almond Board of California. The water needs of almond trees are not unique among trees, and almond growers are committed to innovation and water efficiency. More at almondsustainability.org,” read a radio host.

The defensive tone might be due to the unwanted press almonds have been getting, from Mother Jones and others, about how much water almonds use in drought-ridden California. The state accounts for 80 percent of the world’s almond production, and each almond takes about a gallon of water to grow. All told, growing the crop takes as much water in a year as Los Angeles homes and businesses use in three years. Over half of the almonds produced in California are exported abroad.

Now, it appears that the Almond Board of California, the trade group representing growers of the $6.5 billion crop, has gone on the offense, sponsoring messages through National Public Media, NPR’s sponsorship branch, on five NPR affiliates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. In San Francisco, the ads appear to be running during peak driving hours, during Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

When asked in an email about the reason for the ads, the Almond Board’s Stacey Humble said, “The radio spots were developed more recently to serve our California communities’ need for more recent, accurate research and information reflecting the almond industry’s innovation and commitment to sustainable growing practices.”

An Instragram shot from the Almond Board’s Shark Week campaign.

The ads coincide with other Almond Board PR pushes over the past month. In late June, the Board announced that it would spend $2.5 million on research devoted to sustainable farming practices, including projects targeting water management and honeybee health. It also launched an oddly elaborate Shark Week campaign in the beginning of July, featuring the adventures of a shark who’s stopped being preying on people after he discovered the wonders of the crunchy snack.

On the website publicized in the radio ad, entitled “Get the Facts about Almonds and Water,” the Board argues that acre for acre, almonds use about the same amount of water as other fruits and veggies, and almond growers have cut water use per pound of product by 33 percent in the past two decades.

Despite their water use, almonds are more popular than ever, with Americans eating two times the amount of almonds per year as they did just seven years ago. But the continued drought has leaders in the industry worried—particularly as crop production is declining slightly despite increased acreage.

“The biggest concern for almond users continues to be the impact of ongoing drought on California almond production and how long it could be before sufficient water is available to reverse the downward yield trend,” read a recent Blue Diamond report. Increased demand and shorter supply is causing almond prices to soar. “Almonds a year ago were priced at about $3.30, and we thought that was an exorbitant price,” said Stephen Smith, the CFO of Hain Celestial, a food company that sells almond butter and almond milk. “And here we are looking at prices in the mid-$4 range.”

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The Almond Board Is Now Advertising on NPR Stations

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Holy Shit! Almonds Require a Ton of Bees

by DonnaWahl Posted on May 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Growing 80 percent of the globe’s almonds in California doesn’t just require massive amounts of water. It also takes a whole bunch of honeybees for pollination—roughly two hives’ worth for every acre of almonds trees, around 1.7 million hives altogether. That’s at least 80 percent of all available commercial hives in the United States, Gene Brandi, a California beekeeper who serves as vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, recently told NPR.

Now, that vast army of bees—made up, all told, of more than 80 billion flying, buzzing soldiers—doesn’t stay put in California’s almond-happy Central Valley all year. The almond bloom typically lasts for just a few weeks (or less) in February. The modern honeybee operation is an itinerant business—beekeepers move hives throughout the year, in pursuit of paid pollination gigs—from tangerines in Florida to cherries in Washington state—as well as good forage for honey.

But California’s almond bloom is the biggest gig of all—the “largest managed pollination event anywhere in the world,” Scientific American reports. And as US honeybee populations’ health has flagged in recent years—most famously epitomized by the mysterious winter die-offs that began around a decade ago, known as colony collapse disorder—the almond industry has been drawing in a larger and and larger portion of the nation’s available bee hives.

One question that arises is: Why do the nation’s beekeepers uproot themselves and their winged charges to travel to California each year? The state houses about 500,000 beehives, meaning that more then 1 million come in, from as far away as Maine. What’s the incentive?

These days, US beekeepers typically make more money from renting out their bees for pollination than they do from producing honey. “Without pollination income, we’d be out of business,” Brandi told me. Income from the two sources varies year to year, but pollination income has grown over the years even as honey revenues have fallen, depressed by competition from imported honey. In 2012, for example, US beekeepers brought in $283 million from honey, versus an estimated $656 million from pollination.

And California’s almond growers have to shell out big money to draw in their pollinators—between $165 and $200 per hive, vs $45 to $75 a hive a decade ago, according to the Fresno Bee. That’s around $309 million, if we assume as average price of $182 per hive, the midpoint of the Bee‘s range.

What’s the impact on overall honeybee health, which has been under heavy pressure over the past decade? There are two potential downsides.

The first is from pesticides—insect growth regulators and fungicides—bees encounter in their travels around almond groves. During the 2014 California almond bloom, between 15 percent and 25 percent of beehives suffered “severe” damage, ranging from complete hive collapse to dead and deformed brood (the next generation of bees incubating in the hive), the Pollinator Stewardship Council estimated. The die-off caused an uproar, and many beekeepers pointed a finger at pesticides—and they probably had a point, as I showed here.

This year, Brandi told me, some beekeepers reported losses, but they weren’t nearly as severe or widespread as the ones in 2014. In the wake of the 2014 troubles, the Almond Board of California released a set of “best management practices” for protecting honeybees during the bloom that, Brandi said, may have influenced growers to avoid particularly harmful pesticide applications. Given that almond growers utterly rely on—and indeed, pay heavily for—honeybees for pollinating their crop, it seems logical that they’ll avoid poisoning them when possible. There will also be tension, though, as long as almond trees are planted in geographically concentrated and vast groves. Large monocrops provide an ideal habitat for pests like fungi and insects, and thus a strong incentive to respond with chemicals. There’s also the possibility that concentrating such a huge portion of the nation’s bees in such a tight geographical area facilitates the spread of viruses and other pathogens.

The second threat to bee health from pollinating California’s massive almond bloom comes from long-distance travel. This one lies at the heart of the beekeeping industry’s itinerant business model. Does it compromise bee health to pack hundreds of hives onto a flatbed truck for cross-country trips? The stresses go well beyond the occasional truck wreck. Scientific American explains the rigors of apiary highway travel like this:

The migration…continually boomerangs honeybees between times of plenty and borderline starvation. Once a particular bloom is over, the bees have nothing to eat, because there is only that one pollen-depleted crop as far as the eye can see. When on the road, bees cannot forage or defecate. And the sugar syrup and pollen patties beekeepers offer as compensation are not nearly as nutritious as pollen and nectar from wild plants. Scientists have a good understanding of the macronutrients in pollen such as protein, fat and carbohydrate, but know very little about its many micronutrients such as vitamins, metals and minerals—so replicating pollen is difficult.

A 2012 paper, coauthored by USDA bee researcher Jeff Pettis, found that long-distance travel may indeed have ill health effects—the researchers found that “bees experiencing transportation have trouble fully developing their food glands and this might affect their ability to nurse the next generation of workers.”

Brandi, for his part, dismisses travel as a factor in the overall decline in bee health. “Bees have been traveling back and forth across he country for years,” he said—since long before the colony collapse disorder and other health troubles began to emerge a decade ago, he said. He said bee travel has actually gotten less stressful over the years as beekeepers have upgraded to smoother-riding flatbed trucks. He said other factors, including pesticides, declining biodiversity, and mites (a bee pest) are likely more important drivers of declining bee health.

Meanwhile, California almond country’s massive appetite for pollination isn’t likely to dissipate anytime soon. According to the latest USDA numbers, acreage devoted to almonds expanded by 5 percent in 2014, and growers continue laying in yet more groves this year, Western Farm Press reports. Land devoted to almonds has grown 50 percent since 2005—and every time farmers add another acre of trees, they need access to two additional bee hives for pollination.

So why don’t more beekeepers simply move to California and stay put, to take advantage of the world’s biggest—and growing—pollination gig? I put that question to longtime bee expert Eric Mussen of the University of California-Davis. He said the state is already home to 500,000 of the nation’s 2.7 million hives. The almond bloom is great for a few weeks, but in terms of year-round foraging, “California is already at or near its carrying capacity for honeybees,” he said—the areas with the best-quality forage are already well stocked with bees.So satisfying the world’s ever-growing appetite for almonds will continue to require an annual armada of beehive-laden trucks.

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Holy Shit! Almonds Require a Ton of Bees

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Here’s The Real Problem With Almonds

by WinnieBachman Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Almonds: crunchy, delicious, and…the center of a nefarious plot to suck California dry? They certainly have used up a lot of ink lately—partly inspired by our reporting over the past year. California’s drought-stricken Central Valley churns out 80 percent of the globe’s almonds, and since each nut takes a gallon of water to produce, they account for close to 10 percent of the state’s annual agricultural water use—or more than what the entire population of Los Angeles and San Francisco use in a year.

As Grist’s Nathanael Johnson put it, almonds have become a scapegoat of sorts—”the poster-nut for human wastefulness in California’s drought.” Or, as Alissa Walker put it in Gizmodo, “You know, ALMONDS, THE DEVIL’S NUT.” It’s not surprising that the almond backlash has inspired a backlash of its own. California agriculture is vast and complex, and its water woes can’t hang entirely on any one commodity, not even one as charismatic as the devil’s nut almond.

And as many have pointed out, almonds have a lot going for them—they’re nutritious, they taste good, and they’re hugely profitable for California. In 2014, almonds brought in a whopping $11 billion to the state’s economy. Plus, other foods—namely, animal products—use a whole lot more water per ounce than almonds.

So almonds must be worth all the water they require, right? Not so fast. Before you jump to any conclusions, consider the following five facts:

1. Most of our almonds end up overseas. Almonds are the second-thirstiest crop in California—behind alfalfa, a superfood of sorts for cows that sucks up 15 percent of the state’s irrigation water. Gizmodo‘s Walker—along with many others—wants to shift the focus from almonds to the ubiquitous feed crop, wondering, “Why are we using more and more of our water to grow hay?” Especially since alfalfa is a relatively low-value crop—about a quarter of the per-acre value of almonds—and about a fifth of it is exported.

It should be noted, though, that we export far more almonds than alfalfa: About two thirds of California’s almond and pistachio crops are sent overseas—a de facto export of California’s overtapped water resources.

2. While alfalfa fields are shrinking, almond fields are expanding—in a big way. The drought is already pushing California farmers out of high-water, low-value crops like alfalfa and cotton, and into almonds and two other pricey nuts, pistachios and walnuts. This year, California acreage devoted to alfalfa is expected to shrink 11 percent; and cotton acres look set to dwindle to their lowest level since the 1920s.

Meanwhile, the market is pushing almonds and other nuts in the opposite direction. At a recent confab in California’s nut-rich, water-challenged San Joaquin County, Stuart Resnick, chief of Paramount Farms, by far the state’s largest nut grower, explained why in a speech, as documented by an account in the trade journal Western Farm Press. Almonds, he said, deliver farmers an average net return of $1,431 per acre. Pistachios, another fast-expanding nut hotly promoted by the Paramount farming empire, net even more: $3,519 per acre.

Given that Paramount reportedly manages 50,000 acres of combined almonds and pistachios, it’s safe to say there’s big profits in growing those nuts. And the company, which also buys and processes nuts from other farmers and sells them under the Wonderful brand, plans to expand by fifty percent in the next five years. Currently the company farms 30,000 acres on its own and buys pistachios from farms occupying another 100,000 acres. By 2020, the company’s “goal is 150,000 partner acres, 33,000 Paramount acres,” which would be a 40 percent jump in just five years. And that’s on top of the 118 percent expansion in pistachio acres over the past decade, according to figures Resnick delivered at the conference.

3. Unlike other crops, almonds always require a lot of water—even during drought. Annual crops like cotton, alfalfa and veggies are flexible—farmers can fallow them in dry years. That’s not so for nuts, which need to be watered every year, drought or no, or the trees die, wiping out farmers’ investments.

Already, strains are showing. Back in 2013, a team led by US Geological Survey hydrologist Michelle Sneed discovered that a 1,200-square-mile swath of the southern Central Valley—a landmass more than twice the size of Los Angeles—had been sinking by as much as 11 inches per year, because the water table had fallen from excessive pumping. In an interview last year, Sneed told me the ongoing exodus from annual crops and pasture to nuts likely played a big role.

4. Some nut growers are advocating against water regulation—during the worst drought in California’s history. “I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” one pistachio grower told the audience at the Paramount event, according to the Western Farm Press account. As for water, that’s apparently a political problem, not an ecological one, for Paramount. “Pistachios are valued at $40,000 an acre,” Bill Phillimore, executive vice president of Paramount Farming, reportedly told the crowd. “How much are you spending in the political arena to preserve that asset?” Apparently, he meant: protect it from pesky regulators questioning your water use. He “urged growers to contribute three quarters of a cent on every pound of pistachios sold to a water advocacy effort,” Western Farm Press reported.

5. Mostly, it’s not small-scale farmers that are getting rich off the almond boom. With their surging overseas sales, almonds and pistachios have drawn in massive financial players hungry for a piece of the action. As we reported last year, Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, an investment owned by the Canadian insurance and financial services giant Manulife Financial, owns at least 24,000 acres of almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, making it California’s second-largest nut grower. TIAA-CREF, a large retirement and investment fund that owns 37,000 acres of California farmland, and boasts that it’s one of the globe’s top five almond producers.

Then there’s Terrapin Fabbri Management, a private equity firm that “manages more than $100 million of farm assets on behalf of institutional investors and high net worth clients” and says it’s “focused on capitalizing on the increasing global demand for California’s agricultural output.” In a piece late last year, The Economist pointed out that Terrapin had “bought a dairy company and some vineyards and tomato fields in California, and converted all to grow almonds, whose price has soared as the Chinese have gone nuts for them.” The magazine added that “such conversions require up-front capital”—e.g., to drop wells—”and the ability to survive without returns for years.” Those aren’t privileges many small-scale farmers enjoy.

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Here’s The Real Problem With Almonds

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In the battle of almonds vs. salmon, everyone is a loser

by KimFrenchg Posted on December 29, 2014

almond oy

In the battle of almonds vs. salmon, everyone is a loser

By on 29 Dec 2014commentsShare

It’s a day that ends with Y, so the world is met with yet another entry in the voluminous tome entitled 2014: Year of the War on Almonds. Today, the No. 1 Enemy of the Nut is none other than the noble but needy salmon!

In the Westlands Water District of the San Joaquin Valley, 15 percent of farmland is planted with almond trees. Almonds have surged in popularity among farmers in recent years because A) they are delicious (cut to me gleefully sprinkling almonds on everything I eat) and B) even though they are fucking expensive (cut to me weeping at the grocery store cash register), people will still buy them (see A). And while almond trees do not need to be replanted from season to season, they require huge quantities of water to flourish — just over one gallon per almond.

An old-ish state law in California requires that in dry times (like right now!) surfacewater supplies be diverted to replenish salmon habitats. Farmers, one might expect, are not really into that — and those in the Westlands Water District have unsuccessfully tried to lobby to change these regulations. From the New York Times:

The proposals in the failed legislation — which was sponsored by Representative David Valadao, Republican of Hanford, in the southern San Joaquin Valley agricultural heartland — “would upend a whole number of laws” and long-established priority rights to surface water, said Kate Poole, a water expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

She added, “We have clearly exceeded the ability of our water supplies — including surface and groundwater — to meet the demands we’re putting on it. We have to change, stretching how much we can get out of each drop through expanded urban and agricultural efficiency.” But, she said, “the Republicans in Congress seem to want to go in the other direction and upend the centuries-old priorities and give water to more politically powerful wealthy interests.”

It’s worth noting that Not All Almond Farmers are wealthy nut barons — as Grist fellow Madeleine Thomas reported earlier this year, there’s been a trend in California farmers turning from dairy to almonds just to stay financially viable.

We can argue until the cows come home (spoiler: They are not coming home, because they have turned into almond trees) about whether farmers or fishermen will suffer more from this conflict. However, the true victim is undeniably Gwyneth Kate Paltrow, who survives exclusively on a diet of soaked organic nuts, wild salmon, and fire-roasted copies of A Rush of Blood to the Head. Can we please all get over ourselves and JUST THINK OF OL’ GWEN? Seriously!

Source:
Water Source for Almonds in California May Run Dry

, The New York Times.

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In the battle of almonds vs. salmon, everyone is a loser

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on In the battle of almonds vs. salmon, everyone is a loser