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Page added on November 6, 2013
Cost of nuts to soar as bee population dies
THE price of nutty treats and snacks is about to soar as almond farmers struggle to pollinate their crops because of dwindling bee populations.
The almond market around the world is worth about $5 billion a year, and about 80 per cent of the planet’s almonds come from California, the Daily Mail reports.
But farmers in that part of the world need 1.5 million bee hives a year for pollination.
With bees in short supply, the cost of renting bee hives has tripled in the past decade and the increase is being passed on to consumers.
This has seen the wholesale price of almonds reach an eight-year high and the figure is expected to keep climbing because bee numbers are decreasing to the point of extinction.
And it’s not just a US problem. Because the cost of Californian nuts set the benchmark for the industry, the blowout is also affecting the rest of the world.
Nor the extinction of bees isn’t just a problem for nut lovers. They are the most important pollinators of all fruit and vegetables in the world, and more than a third of our food production depends on them.
6 Comments on "Cost of nuts to soar as bee population dies"
action on Wed, 6th Nov 2013 12:25 pm
Bee-ware, the sting of bumble-ling, hive-minded farming practices, using too much bug killing venom, is buzzing closer.
Kenz300 on Wed, 6th Nov 2013 5:26 pm
Bee colony collapse is a serious problem……
The bees are like the canary in the coal mine for the human race……
They show that we are slowly poisoning ourselves with too many pesticides and fertilizers…..
J-Gav on Wed, 6th Nov 2013 6:23 pm
Damnation! I’m a nut-freak and this freaks me out.
peakspud on Wed, 6th Nov 2013 6:26 pm
From what I have read, the leading culprit seems to be a mixture of herbicides and pesticides. Where each by itself may not have shown a significant effect on bees, some of them together mix a deadly cocktail.
We may be coming to the day soon where there will not be such a fuss to label some items as “organically grown” since the chemicals hurting the bees will be banned. Get ready for even higher grocery bills, though it can’t be reflected in official gubmint inflation figures – that’d make ’em look bad.
ezrydermike on Wed, 6th Nov 2013 7:22 pm
peak nuts
Frank Kling on Thu, 7th Nov 2013 6:19 pm
It’s not just the bees, but the bats and frogs. White Nose Syndrome has decimated bats in the NE and this mysterious collapse has spread to the South and Midwest resulting in the deaths of millions of bats, which are Mother Nature’s most critical insectivore. The USDA estimates that farmers will have to apply billions of dollars in new pesticide poisons to make up the difference and thereby exacerbate the problem even further. Chytrid is a mysterious fungus that originated in Israel (germ warfare gone bad?) and has spread world wide and causing the extinction of numerous frog species. These are all canaries dying………