Disappearance of honey bees could hike food prices
Updated Fri. Jun. 27 2008 7:53 AM ET
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told U.S. lawmakers Thursday.
"No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent.
About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value in the U.S.
In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 per cent to 90 per cent of their hives.
This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder.
Scientists don't know how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 per cent of their managed colonies this year.
It was 31 per cent for 2007, said Edward Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service.
"If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to continue to grow the high quality, nutritious foods our country relies on," said Democratic Representative Dennis Cardoza of California.
Cardoza, chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel, said "this is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."
Food prices have gone up 83 per cent in three years, according to the World Bank.
Edward Flanagan, who raises blueberries in Milbridge, Maine, said he could be forced to increase prices tenfold or go out of business without the beekeeping industry.
"Every one of those berries owes its existence to the crazy, neurotic dancing of a honey bee from flower to flower," he said.
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