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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (719731)6/6/2013 12:00:33 PM
From: Bilow1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Brumar89

  Read Replies (1) of 1578451
 
Hi tejek; Re the article's quote: "Honeybees pollinate approximately one third of all U.S. crops that humans eat ..."

Here's a list of the major food crops in the US, crop area in millions of acres and value in billions of dollars:

Corn (grain)
84
63.9
Soybeans
73.8
37.6
Hay
55.7
6.7
Wheat
45.7
14.6
Cotton
9.5
8.3
Sorghum (grain)
3.9
1.3
Rice
2.6
2.9
epa.gov

The above totals to a value of $135.3 billion dollars. From the above link, the total US crop production is $153 billion per year so the above 7 crops represent 88%. Now look at the list closely. Humans don't eat much cotton or hay. All the other major crops do not need honeybees for pollination.

I doubt that it's true that "honeybees pollinate 1/3 of all US crops that humans eat." Instead, I suspect that this is more fear, uncertainty and doubt raised by people looking to get the US government to give them money to support their research / industry, and to support stupid ideas like bees at airports.

-- Carl
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