Health Notes is usually about keeping YOU healthy, and frequently about the foods you eat (or at least should eat). This month we’re stepping out to get a longer range view, and concentrate on the food web that supplies ALL of us ALL the food we eat. Even more specifically, we want to tell you about bees. They’re absolutely critical to our food supply, but they’re facing an existential threat. Fortunately, there’s a way you can help them…
Pollination is essentially plant reproduction. Without help from animal pollinators, our everyday food supply would look much different – at least one third of our staples we’ve come to rely on would no longer be available. A few examples of the foods that would no longer be available to us if bees ceased pollinating our agricultural goods are: broccoli, asparagus, cantaloupes, cucumbers, pumpkins, blueberries, watermelons, almonds, apples, cranberries, and cherries.
Bees are responsible for pollinating approximately 400 different agricultural types of plant. Honeybees and other pollinators are necessary to produce approximately $29 billion (in 2010) of agricultural crops in the U.S. alone, about one-third of everything we eat.
Unfortunately, bees are now vanishing at an alarming rate. They face many of the same challenges as other threatened species, including habitat loss and pathogens, but pesticide exposure is of particular concern. A growing body of evidence, including dozens of peer-reviewed independent scientific studies, indicates that exposure to systemic insecticides, like neonicotinoids, are directly harming pollinators and causing poor bee health and severe population declines.
This problem is urgent and worldwide. EPA plans is reviewing many of these insecticides, but results from the study (much less any regulation) are not due for several years. This is not an acceptable timetable for beekeepers in crisis today.
If you think our food supply is important, then you might want to take action to protect the insects that make it possible. As it happens, we have just the way…
Urge President Obama to protect bees from toxic pesticides before it’s too late
In a June 2014 Presidential memorandum, President Obama outlined a new strategy to protect pollinators that emphasized the need for public education, additional research, and habitat expansion. While these are all important in the protection of pollinators, there isn’t much urgency or clarity on how the task force will address one of the primary threats to bees and other pollinators: exposure to highly toxic, systemic, and persistent pesticides.
