The Buzzzznesss of Bees

Posted on September 29, 2008 by John Platt in Nature & Science

By now, you’ve probably heard about the horror of colony collapse disorder. Bees around the world are disappearing, dying off, dropping like flies, and no one knows 100% why. But what we do know is that where the bees go, so goes most of our food.

So far, the business world hasn’t really taken much notice of this problem. I mean, how much is a bee worth, right?

Well, it turns out that bees are worth quite a bit. A new study says that bees are worth a staggering $220 billion a year to the world economy.

Specifically, that value comes from bees’ role as pollinators. Modern industrial farming techniques don’t rely on bees as much as they used to, so insect-based pollination only accounts for 9.5% of agricultural production worldwide, but the loss of bees will still hit businesses and consumers with at least $220 billion in extra costs every year.

Of course, organic foods tend to have a greater reliance on pollination, so they’ll be hit worse.

What does this mean to you? Well, it might be a good idea to try raising your own bees, or even investing in a bee business. Because some day soon, businesses are going to be looking for those bees…

 

 

agriculture, bees, colony collapse disorder, food, green business, organic food, organics, pollination