More than 80% of food crops require pollination but the populations of insects that do most of this work have collapsed. The essence of the technique is to devote one in every four cultivation strips to flowering crops, such as oil seeds and spices. In addition, she provides pollinators with cheap nesting support, such as old wood and beaten soil that ground nesting bees can burrow into. When she first suggested a focus on pollinators at the world agricultural conference in 2010, the delegates laughed at her. “Countries are saying that we are using too many pesticides and the number of birds and bees is going down.

Source: The Guardian November 23, 2018 06:30 UTC