Plunging Bee Populations Affect 70 Percent of Global Food Species

GreenTracker| The UN’s environmental agency warned that the rapid decline of the world’s bee population will have dire consequences for the world’s food supply. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that U.S. honey-producing colonies have dropped from a population of 5.5 million in 1950 to 2.5 million in 2007.

Monsanto may sound as if it has the global food supply under control, but that’s a delusion.  The UN report warns that of the 100 crop species that produce 90 percent of the world’s food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees.

“Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N.’s environmental program. “Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to 7 billion people.”

The bee report, ‘Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats to Insect Pollinators’, concludes that bees are early warning indicators of the health of animal and plant life. Multiple factors ranging from insecticides that damage a bee’s memory to climate change are causing the dramatic declines in global bee populations. via UPI