The “Bee Issue”: monoculture is endangering the food supply
June 2, 2009 at 2:44 pm Leave a comment
Because we depend on bees for “1 in 3 of every bites of food we eat,” the collapse of bee colonies is a pretty big deal. Michael Pollan suggests that pesticides may not be the only problem. Did you know that 75% of the bees in America are shipped out to California to pollinate the almond crops? Why would they need to do that? Because there’s nothing but almonds in the Central Valley, so “there’s nothing [for bees] to eat for 50 weeks of the year.” Oh, and to get the bees “in shape” for their road trip, they feed them high fructose corn syrup. (No word yet on the scary things GMO corn may be doing to bees.) Would it kill them to plant something else so they could sustain their own bees?
Have you heard of Backyard Bee Keeping? I’m fascinated by the movement even though I’m not that hardcore. Yet. 
Entry filed under: Food, Uncategorized. Tags: Bees, colony collapse, disorder, Food, monoculture.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed