'Pol­li­na­tors as a poster-child for diver­si­fied farm­ing systems

Both man­aged and native pol­li­na­tors have suf­fered recent declines, lead­ing to con­cerns that crop pol­li­na­tion will suf­fer in the future, par­tic­u­larly since an increas­ing pro­por­tion of agri­cul­ture is devoted to pro­duc­tion of pollinator-dependent crops. In Cal­i­for­nia, this is cer­tainly the case, with the mas­sive con­ver­sion of many agri­cul­tural lands to pro­duc­tion of almond. Pre­sent­ing recent research from her lab, Kre­men will exam­ine how diver­si­fy­ing our farms, from plot to field to land­scape scale, can main­tain resilient pol­li­na­tor com­mu­ni­ties and pol­li­na­tion ser­vices, and how this in turn could improve the resilience and sus­tain­abil­ity of many other crit­i­cal ecosys­tem ser­vices in farm­ing land­scapes. She will show how pol­li­na­tors are an ambas­sador for the con­cept of diver­si­fied farm­ing sys­tems and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, and how also, issues involv­ing pol­li­na­tors, such as Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der, are related to many of the most intran­si­gent com­po­nents of our food sys­tem, such as its monop­o­liza­tion by a rel­a­tively small num­ber of dis­trib­u­tors of agri­cul­tural inputs (seeds, pesticides).

Speaker: Claire Kremen, UC Berkeley