Americans spent $1.2 billion on almond milk last year. Sales are two-and-a-half times what they were five years ago. Per capita almond consumption in the U.S. is two pounds per year. Eighty percent of the world’s almonds come from the Central Valley in California. Acreage planted to almonds has doubled since 2000. Giant corporate-owned farms predominate. Almond trees are thirsty and the subterranean aquifers underneath the fertile Central Valley are being sucked dry.
You may worry about the rising price of your Honey Nut Cheerios. You should be even more concerned about pollination. Remember your ninth-grade science? It’s how plants have sex: plant pollen is transferred from the male reproductive organs to the female reproductive organs to form seeds. Wind, animals and insects are the transfer agents. Bees may be the most important of the players in nature’s mènage á trois.
Bee pollination may be responsible for as much as 70% of food grown for humans, possibly 90% of the world’s nutrition.
Much study and speculation has gone into why fewer bees are at work. It could be the changing climate, or chemical fertilizers and pesticides. More recently, there is evidence that corporate monoculture – giant fields of a single crop appear to lessen bees’ interest in flitting from flower to flower. It seems that sexual boredom of bees is a danger to agricultural abundance.
Meanwhile in France, there was concern about the 180,000 bees living on the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral. The Cathedral’s staff shared the honey the hives produced. Shortly after the fire was extinguished, bees were observed flitting around the still-in-tact hives. It is not yet known if most of the bee population came through the conflagration unscathed, but early signs are encouraging.