[News] 2035: Potential Loss Of Earth's Fruit And Vegetables
2035: Potential Loss Of Earth's Fruit And Vegetables
What can you do to help the bees, and both our current and future food supply?
1. Become informed about the gravity of the problem – View The Silence of
the Bees.http://ppt.cc/4t9F
2. Learn how you can help by visiting the PBS Nature Site.http://ppt.cc/jR!Z
3. Check out the Web and Print Resourceshttp://ppt.cc/COeS designed to create awareness and
action steps to address this problem.
4. Support sustainable agricultural practices that have for centuries
preserved the health of honey bees.
5. Share this post, related information, and the PBS documentary with
concerned others.
Here –
in a nutshell – is the summary of a problem that is unlike one that
has ever been faced previously by mankind in history: Starting in the winter
of 2006, millions of bees vanished without a trace from their hives across
the United States and Europe, and are still continuing to do so. The
disappearance of the honey bees -who are the indispensable pollinators of
fruits and vegetables – has left billions of dollars of crops at risk and
has threatened our food supply in a manner that has never been experienced
before. Given the unprecedented nature of the problem, and the agricultural
nightmare that looms ahead with the loss of the vast majority of fruits and
vegetables, scientists are now scrambling to understand the causes behind the
disappearance of the honey bees--both in the West, as well as in many other
parts of the globe.
One
of the main causes that has been identified as being responsible for the
disappearance of the honey bees is referred to as CCD or Colony Collapse
Disorder. It has been confirmed that a virus known as IAPV has been found in
all CCD hives. The origin of this virus is in Israel; thus, it remains to be
understood how this particular virus made it to the U.S. hives. Other
possible causes of the disappearance of the bees are under study as well.
These include understanding whether the mass relocation/transportation of
bees in the service of industrialized agriculture, high crop yield, and
efficiency of production has contributed to a loss of immunity in the bees,
resulting in their premature death.
The
problem we are left to face is an enormous one. Scientists featured in
the PBS documentary warn that if we are unable to stop the further loss of
bees, we are faced with the loss of the very foods (fruits, nuts, and
vegetables) that protect us from chronic illnesses. The reality is that there
are no known means to pollinate the blossoms of fruit or nut trees that can
begin to compare with the efficiency of honey bees. As an example, a hive of
bees pollinates 3 million flowers a day; however, when an effort is made to
pollinate flowers manually, it has been estimated that one human being can
pollinate a maximum of only 3 trees a day. Further, it is estimated that to
replace honey bees with human or artificial pollinators would cost about 90
billion dollars a year in the U.S. alone; and even so, such an effort may not
be sustainable for long.
The
bottom line? It is amply evident that now is the time for us to put
concerted effort and resources into finding a viable solution to this very
serious problem, which, if left unchecked, is expected to turn into a global
crisis. It is estimated that if the bees continue to disappear at the current
rate, the honey bee population in the United States will cease to exist by
the year 2035.
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