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If you close your eyes for a moment and I say pollinators, what comes to mind? Maybe you hear the buzzing of honeybees or bumblebees, or you picture the light flapping of monarch butterfly wings.
These are certainly some high-profile pollinators—the celebrities who get all the attention!—but there are so many insects, mammals, and birds that are unsung heroes of the food system.
Flowers and crops can be pollinated by bees, wasps, moths, flies, butterflies, birds, bats, and even lemurs and lizards. And animals we do talk a lot about, like bees, don’t necessarily all get the credit they deserve: There are more than 3,500 species of native bees around the globe that are crucial pollinators, not just a few.
As the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, one out of every three bites of food you take depends on a pollinator, as do fully three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants. While crops’ success rates are dependent on a variety of factors, there’s no doubt that crop yields—especially among oil crops, soy, and fruits—will drop if pollinators disappeared.
And beyond just pollination, insects are essentially the base of our entire food chain, says Leslie Ries, an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Georgetown University.
“Insects perform so many ecosystem services,” Ries told us at our Climate Week NYC Summit last fall. “We can’t minimize all the values insects have, and we’ve just gotten more and more evidence of the global decline of insects over the past 20 to 50 years. And that’s not just very sensitive species in conservation-associated habitats—it’s the most common species.”
She’s right: Pollinators, including insects, are in trouble. And without them, we don’t eat the same!
So what’s going wrong here?
Habitat loss and the climate crisis are huge culprits, both directly and indirectly. If native vegetation is destroyed—think not just mass-scale deforestation but also the building of highways and lawns, for example—pollinators have a harder time finding food, places to breed, or spots of safety along migration paths. As for climate, if warmer temps mean flowers bloom before migrating pollinators arrive, both the plants and animals suffer. And the long-term effects of the climate crisis, including more devastating wildfires, also hurt both plants and animals.
Another significant culprit in pollinator decline is neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that are particularly harmful. As Kathy Nolan of Physicians for Social Responsibility told us at Climate Week, these pesticides are being used preventatively, before an infestation even takes place—which massively increases their supply and can actually cause more damage than good.
“They are more harmful in their effects as they spread throughout the environment and are consumed by us, and they also can breed resistance to the use of this class of insecticides,” she said. “I’m very worried that we have increasing levels of a compound we know is toxic—and it’s building up (in the environment and in our bodies) year over year.”
Dan Raichel, the Director for Pollinators & Pesticides at NRDC, calls them “one of the most ecologically destructive pesticides since DDT.”
The comparison is worth noting: DDT, a pesticide used worldwide in the 1950s and 60s, faced significant public opposition, most notably via Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, a book that helped kick off the modern environmental movement. In the early 1970s, the U.S. banned DDT and passed the Endangered Species Act, which is still in force today.
We need a resurgence of this strong, public, vocal environmental movement to fight against neonicotinoids, support pollinators, and protect the health of the food system!
I’m so pleased to see efforts like Re:wild Your Campus, a national movement in the U.S. that helps students eliminate pesticides from campus grounds and transform them into vibrant, sustainable, and safe environments. And several major and regional grocery store chains have also stepped up efforts to protect pollinators in their supply chains, which is a level of private-sector action we need to continue to see more of!
In the European Union, thanks to the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy in the European Green Deal, pesticide use is set to be cut by 50 percent by 2030. In the U.S., a few states, like New Jersey, have enacted policies cutting back on neonicotinoids, but national action in the U.S. remains an active fight we need to continue pursuing.
Even incremental changes can help: In the UK, government plans to protect pollinators call for a 10 percent reduction in pesticides by 2030 along with support for techniques like integrated pest management, by which farmers can reduce pests without pesticides.
Eaters can also contribute by planting pollinator-friendly gardens, and resources are available worldwide to help you. Here in the U.S., gardeners can check out this guide from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to identify ideal plants for your region and tips from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for starting a pollinator garden. Friends of the Earth UK also has a list of bee-friendly plants for every season, and Food Tank compiled a list a few years ago of pollinator-supporting groups all around the globe.
The food system relies on pollinators—so let’s build a food system that pollinators can rely on, too. Let’s take action to protect and revitalize the stunning diversity of animals that pollinate our world, not just the ones like bees and butterflies that earn the most headlines. And let’s support farmers and food producers who are treating the land and our pollinators with respect.
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Photo courtesy of Annette Meredith, Unsplash
