Fruitless Fall

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That breakdown may be the first of many. If beekeeping fails as a business and rent-a-bees are no longer available as pollinators, we will lose some important crops. But perhaps honeybees are the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps populations of other natural pollinators are crashing due to a perfect storm of chemicals in the environment, parasites and diseases, and habitat loss -- and we just haven't noticed.

According to Jacobsen's sources, that may well be the case. Around the world, researchers are documenting a decline in the number of native bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and bats. Their loss could affect even more agricultural crops as well as natural ecosystems: approximately three-quarters of the world's 250,000 plant species depend on pollinators for their survival.

Moreover, what if the collapse of the domesticated honeybee foretells the fate of other domesticated animals? As we do with honeybees, we breed our cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep to accommodate our needs, not for the resilience required for these species to survive. We crowd them into feedlots and factory farms and dose them with chemicals. Jacobsen argues that the collapse of the honeybee "is a symptom of a larger disease -- a disease of fossil fuels and chemical shortcuts, of billion-bee slums, and the speed of the modern world. An imbalance in the system."

The idea that the overuse of pesticides and insecticides could create springs without birds may not be new, but a fall without any fruit? The demise not only of bees but also of our food supply? Agriculture is not just a business; it's a contract with nature. It's about time for some communal wisdom of our own.