It's all over the news, it positively plasters the Internet. The question of "What would happen if there were no more honeybees?" is everywhere.
Yet, the answer to that is harder to nail down. So many people trying to answer this with a simple answer. The most common being, "We'll all die!!!" and other such alarmist comments.
Now, I won't lie and tell you that my opinion is very far off. No, we are in for some dramatic changes and a lot less people in the world (a lot less life in general in the world) due to famine and lack of agricultural resources. Many fruits, vegetables nuts, berries, etc.. (over 90 different crops in all) will be seriously diminished, if not outright eliminated.
Due to fewer numbers available, prices for these will rise astronomically and be available to only the few who can afford them. Many of the family farms and ranchers that have a heavy dependence on bee pollinated crops will be forced to shut down costing us food availability and jobs. Companies that depend directly on these crops like cereal makers, will dramatically diminish in their offerings and also see a great loss in jobs as plants close down and workers become unemployed.
As much as the tech and manufacturing industries like to think they are the dominant movers and shakers, the reality is, agriculture is still boss when it all comes down to do it. Lose your agriculture and you lose nearly everything.
However, most people seem to think this problem has a a single source, that being pesticides. While pesticides certainly play their role, they are by far not the only or even the biggest problem.
What we have done in our so smart modern agricultural world, is to essentially place all of our eggs in one basket, then set the basket down on an ant hill, then poured poison in the basket.
As seemingly smart as we think we are, we so easily allow ourselves to be blinded by greed. Greed for more profits, greed for more food, greed for more land.
Our agricultural practices have put us in a tricky predicament and because of that, our agricultural pollination beekeeping has come into trouble and as a repercussion of their travels far and wide in this country, local beekeepers are seeing ill effects.
The use of Integrated Pest Management practices and products has grown over the years, but not proportionally with agriculture and the the use of pesticides. IPM is still way, waaayyy behind.
Land management practices that stress the land, stress the plants and consequently stress the bees and other creatures are prevalent. A grand lie about how much modern agriculture is needed to feed the world has been bought by the majority of people and they tolerate the practices even while they become aware of ramifications from the lie.
More people are dependent on fewer farmers and agricultural sources because of political decisions to keep other geographic areas, peoples and countries dependent. That's not hyperbole or tin foil hat talk, that's information openly disclosed and documented by the federal government. It's a fact, they use food and access to food as a weapon, no secret there.
The fewer sources and growers there are, the easier it is to control what they grow and how much of it. To this day, amidst the "great need to feed more and more people", the U.S. government still pays farmers to NOT grow certain crops and pays incentives to grow others. This is how they work to control the commodities markets, national retail prices and control agricultural trade by controlling availability. Again, no secret here, all of this has been documented and spoken to in hundreds of places.
As the modern practices continue however, we are seeing scientists report on problems arising causing problems for bees, waterways, migratory birds, mass fish die offs in lakes, rivers and streams, etc... once again, I'm not being paranoid, this is all public and openly shared in dozens of public documents by government agencies such as the EPA, the USDA and more.
The pesticides are only one part of a multi-faceted problem that has it's origins in modern agricultural practices.
Fewer family, independent farmers means that more agricultural land is farmed by corporations which collaborate with government direction without batting an eye. There are fewer independent farmers to decide how they will grow on their own terms.
Larger and larger tracts of agricultural land are being farmed in ways that exacerbate the problems rather than finding other ways to do the same thing, grow food.
So you see, finding real solutions, right now, to our agricultural problems not only saves our pollinating bees, it saves our economy and our lives.
