a Mark snip..
I would love someone to do a study to determine how much growers spend on each thing they do, pay money for, to produce and harvest a crop. I suspect that per acre paying a beekeeper to place beehives in their orchard or grove is the least expensive thing they pay for which insures the quality of their crop.

my comments...
many state with land grant institutions normally produce what are called 'enterprise budgets' for most crops or livestock operation in that particular state.  normally these are produced via the extension service and the agricultural economic departments in that state land grand university.  if the enterprise requires pollination or if pollination is a routine cultural practice then normally a per acre charge is in these budges for honeybee pollination.

it has been a very long time since I reviewed these sorts of budgets but from what I can remember your question above is exactly on point.  quite often when folks try to produce a crop without this service it is only then (that is when a crop that needs pollination has none) does the primary producer fully understand the true value of pollination service < perhaps one of the reason that almond grower will pay so much to rent a hive of bees is this little experiment has already been done in the almonds.

ET's first law of economics is.... you only value that which you don't have.   

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