I think the issue is being sidestepped. The one commenter I have seen in print self identifies as a director of the American Beekeeping Federation. He/she goes on to say:

> It must be noted as an industry we are in part, responsible for almost 1/3 of the food production.

This factoid appears almost as often as the Einstein quote. If you play fast and loose with facts, you lose credibility.

How much does agriculture depend on pollinators? Lessons from long-term trends in crop production:

† 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.

† 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.

† According to our results the proportion of the total production that can be attributed directly to animal pollination, and that may be lost in the absence of flower visitors, is on the order of 5 % (developed world).

Annals of Botany 103: 1579–1588, 2009 doi:10.1093/aob/mcp076, available online at www.aob.oxfordjournals.org

PLB

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