Pollination services for sustainable agriculture

Abstract

Pollinators are essential for orchard, horticultural and forage production, as well as the production of seed for many root and fibre crops. Pollinators such as bees, birds and bats affect 35 percent of the world’s crop production, increasing outputs of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide. Food security, food diversity, human nutrition and food prices all rely strongly on animal pollinators. The consequences of pollinator declines are likely to impact the production and costs of vitamin-rich crops like fruits and vegetables, leading to increasingly unbalanced diets and health problems. Maintaining and increasing yields in horticultural crops under agricultural development is critically important to health, nutrition, food security and better farm incomes for poor farmers. In the past, pollination has been provided by nature at no explicit cost to human communities. As farm fields have become larger, and the use of agricultural chemicals has increased, mounting evidence points to a p otentially serious decline in populations of pollinators under agricultural development.