Taking pollination ecosystem services to the farm: Development of habitat management practices to support sustainable food production

Background/Question/Methods

Production of crops that are dependent on pollination is at risk from the declining levels of bees and other pollinators that perform this valuable service. While honey bees deliver a majority of food crop pollination, they are not the most efficient bee for some crops, and their populations are challenged by diseases and other stressors. Proactive development of strategies to diversify sources of pollination may help ensure the long-term sustainability of this important sector of our food systems. Provision of habitat for bees in proximity to cropped areas is an attractive approach for supporting ecosystem services, but effective implementation of this strategy will require a thorough understanding of plant species mixes attractive to bees, how to best establish and manage such plantings, location relative to the crop, and how landscape context might affect their performance. For adoption by growers, it will also be important to understand the return on investment possible from establishing such habitat, and how potential cost-share programs may support such efforts. Finally, opportunities for realizing multiple ecosystem services from these practices can build a broad base of stakeholder support. Our ongoing research in fruit and vegetable production systems has taken a stepwise approach by first selecting and evaluating native plants for supporting bees, then integrating these into habitat plantings to evaluate bee response, and finally planting selected mixes at fruit and vegetable farms to determine their ability to support pollination ecosystem services. 

Results/Conclusions

Pollinator abundance and diversity varied among different seed mixes tested in each region, leading to the identification of regionally-appropriate mixes to test in evaluations on commercial farms. Our data also support the hypothesis that provision of habitat can increase pollinators and the ecosystem services that they deliver, with increased pollination of blueberry in fields adjacent to habitat that we have established. This suggests that locally-restored areas of habitat can benefit food production and help buffer farms against potential declines in bees.