AOBPreview originally published online on April 1, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1579-1588; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp076
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This article appears in the following Annals of Botany issue: Special Issue: Plant-Pollinator Interactions [View the issue table of contents]
How much does agriculture depend on pollinators? Lessons from long-term trends in crop production
1 Laboratorio Ecotono, INIBIOMA-CONICET and Centro Regional Bariloche, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, 8400 Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina
2 Cátedra de Métodos Cuantitativos Aplicados, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453, 1417 Buenos Aires, Argentina
3 CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
4 Environmental Sciences Policy and Management, 137 Mulford Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-3114, USA
5 Agroecology, University of Goettingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Goettingen, Germany
* For correspondence. E-mail marcelo.aizen{at}crub.uncoma.edu.ar
Received: 27 October 2008 Returned for revision: 19 January 2009 Accepted: 13 February 2009 Published electronically: 1 April 2009
Background and Aims: Productivity of many crops benefits from the presence of pollinating insects, so a decline in pollinator abundance should compromise global agricultural production. Motivated by the lack of accurate estimates of the size of this threat, we quantified the effect of total loss of pollinators on global agricultural production and crop production diversity. The change in pollinator dependency over 46 years was also evaluated, considering the developed and developing world separately.
Methods: Using the extensive FAO dataset, yearly data were compiled for 1961–2006 on production and cultivated area of 87 important crops, which we classified into five categories of pollinator dependency. Based on measures of the aggregate effect of differential pollinator dependence, the consequences of a complete loss of pollinators in terms of reductions in total agricultural production and diversity were calculated. An estimate was also made of the increase in total cultivated area that would be required to compensate for the decrease in production of every single crop in the absence of pollinators.
Key Results: The expected direct reduction in total agricultural production in the absence of animal pollination ranged from 3 to 8 %, with smaller impacts on agricultural production diversity. The percentage increase in cultivated area needed to compensate for these deficits was several times higher, particularly in the developing world, which comprises two-thirds of the land devoted to crop cultivation globally. Crops with lower yield growth tended to have undergone greater expansion in cultivated area. Agriculture has become more pollinator-dependent over time, and this trend is more pronounced in the developing than developed world.
Conclusions: We propose that pollination shortage will intensify demand for agricultural land, a trend that will be more pronounced in the developing world. This increasing pressure on supply of agricultural land could significantly contribute to global environmental change.
Key words: Agricultural production, biotic pollination, crop diversity, cultivated area, developed world, developing world, FAO, randomization
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