{"title":"Measuring beekeepers' economic value of contract enhancements in almond pollination agreements","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108351","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The world's dependence on managed pollinators is growing due to decreasing native bee populations, coupled with increased production of crops requiring pollination services. Growers of pollinated crops may have opportunities to enhance pollination contracts to attract beekeepers and promote bee health. Growers must assess these benefits relative to implementation costs, yet little information exists. We investigate the value of contract enhancements to commercial beekeepers participating in California almond pollination services, a pollination event that demands roughly 89% of US honey bee colonies and makes up over half of US beekeeper annual revenues. We find beekeepers value clauses that ensure additional pesticide protection, advance payment, and certain cover crops. We illustrate market-based mechanisms for incentivizing agricultural practices that can improve native and managed pollinator health, while also alleviating growers' concerns about pollination deficits.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51021,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924002489","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The world's dependence on managed pollinators is growing due to decreasing native bee populations, coupled with increased production of crops requiring pollination services. Growers of pollinated crops may have opportunities to enhance pollination contracts to attract beekeepers and promote bee health. Growers must assess these benefits relative to implementation costs, yet little information exists. We investigate the value of contract enhancements to commercial beekeepers participating in California almond pollination services, a pollination event that demands roughly 89% of US honey bee colonies and makes up over half of US beekeeper annual revenues. We find beekeepers value clauses that ensure additional pesticide protection, advance payment, and certain cover crops. We illustrate market-based mechanisms for incentivizing agricultural practices that can improve native and managed pollinator health, while also alleviating growers' concerns about pollination deficits.
期刊介绍:
Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between "nature''s household" (ecosystems) and "humanity''s household" (the economy). Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. The journal thus emphasizes critical work that draws on and integrates elements of ecological science, economics, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics. The journal is transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open, drawing on the insights offered by a variety of intellectual traditions, and appealing to a diverse readership.
Specific research areas covered include: valuation of natural resources, sustainable agriculture and development, ecologically integrated technology, integrated ecologic-economic modelling at scales from local to regional to global, implications of thermodynamics for economics and ecology, renewable resource management and conservation, critical assessments of the basic assumptions underlying current economic and ecological paradigms and the implications of alternative assumptions, economic and ecological consequences of genetically engineered organisms, and gene pool inventory and management, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, integrating natural resources and environmental services into national income and wealth accounts, methods of implementing efficient environmental policies, case studies of economic-ecologic conflict or harmony, etc. New issues in this area are rapidly emerging and will find a ready forum in Ecological Economics.