As the food industry continues to grapple with supply chain issues, a new report from USApple shines a light on what has the potential to become the ultimate supply chain challenge — what should happen if the growing community fails to protect pollinators.
Created in partnership with the Honey Bee Health Coalition, USApple has released its Pollinator Best Management Practices for Apples. This set of practices for U.S. apple production was created to provide guidance for growers and regulators on pollinator protection in orchards, said USApples.
“One-third of the food we eat begins with pollinators, and each year they are the genesis of $21 billion in economic activity in apples alone,” USApple President and CEO Jim Bair said in a release. “Protecting pollinators is not just the ethically and environmentally right thing to do, it’s also good for our business. USApple, retailers and customers believe sustainability is critical, and these best management practices will be a helpful tool for continuing and expanding the efforts that are already underway.”
Apples are an important pollinator-dependent crop grown for commercial production on 295,000 acres in various regions in the U.S., including 192,000 acres in the West and another 103,000 acres in the East, according to the best practices report, which also takes into account regional differences in apple production.
“The goal of this work is to increase understanding within the U.S. apple growing community of the benefits and opportunities around protecting pollinators, while also recognizing the need to protect the crop from pest damage,” said the organization.
Rent-a-bee
While USApple notes that its namesake fruit produces flowers that many kinds of insects can access, bees provide the most pollination value. Because of a mite that largely eradicated the U.S. honeybee population in the 1980s, growers can now rent colonies of honeybees for placement where they are needed and then move them out once crop bloom has ended, explained USApples.
Given their wide foraging range, “pollinators active in and around orchards, including managed bees hired for pollination services, have the potential to be negatively impacted by pest management practices,” said USApple, which recommends steps to minimize unintended exposures of bees to pesticides and identifies higher-risk situations, including:
- When pesticide applications are made in blocks not in bloom but containing blooming weeds within a foraging range of hives or wild bee nests;
- When systemic pesticides applied pre-bloom move through treated trees, ending up in nectar or pollen collected from those trees by foraging bees; and
- When hives are moved among various crops for pollination services, residue exposure can be cumulative.
Management practices for life
Additional topics explored in the Pollinator Best Management Practices for Apples report include providing and conserving pollinator habitat and other floral sources; integrated pest management in apples; help with pollinator habitat installation; using biological control such as pheromone-mediated mating disruption and other biorational practices to help reduce the need for other pesticide applications; pesticide selection and application timing; and keeping good records of all pesticide applications, even when not required by law.
Other considerations available for review in the Pollinator Best Practices report include drift prevention and mitigation; use of good calibration tools and training; weed management; and preventing contamination of open water.
