Student Work Highlight – Athena Anderson
Historical Analysis of Education About Native Pollinators for Farmers in Western North Carolina
Written by: Athena Anderson
Pollinators make the majority of our fruit and vegetable crops possible by facilitating reproduction in flowering plants. There are thousands of native pollinators in the U.S., but our agricultural system has become dependent upon the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), a non-native species. Honeybees have little immunity to native pathogens and suffer stress from intensive commercial management practices. Beekeepers struggle to maintain their hives and predictions abound of a coming national agricultural crisis as a result of honeybee decline. Native pollinators can provide all necessary pollination services to ensure sustainable crop production, given the right conditions. Conservation of native pollinators on cropland could improve food security and buffer our national food system against honeybee loss.
In my discussions with farmers in western North Carolina (WNC), I’ve discovered that many farms in the region lack dedicated pollinator habitat and farmers rely on honeybees for crop pollination. I suspect there are two primary barriers that could explain this situation: (1) WNC farmers don’t know about the importance of native pollinators for sustainable crop production or (2) they don’t have the resources to plan and/or implement native pollinator conservation measures on their land. The purpose of this study was to explore the first potential barrier by answering two questions:
- When and how were WNC farmers historically alerted to the importance of native pollinators for fruit and vegetable production?
- How did the discussion of native pollinators change over time in the information historically shared with WNC farmers?
I analyzed the information about native pollinators that was available to WNC farmers in state agricultural publications and regional newspapers from 1895-1991. This involved keyword searches for pollinator-related terms in almost 1,000 publications and news pages located through open-access digital databases. I recorded instances in which animal pollination was mentioned, whether the pollinators discussed were native to WNC, if the information was accurate, and other data.
In answer to my research questions, I found that WNC farmers were not alerted to the importance of native pollinators in the agricultural and general media publications searched across almost a century. As a result of this, the discussion of native pollinators did not change in that timeframe. Pollination by animals native to WNC was only mentioned once across all publications explored. While the topic of pollination was discussed throughout the time span indicated, it was almost exclusively in reference to honeybees. In the single instance in which native pollinators were named, they were also discounted as having insufficient and unreliable population sizes to impact crop production. My research suggests WNC farmers were not historically educated about the importance of native pollinators. The study was limited in only having access to open-source databases and in that the most recent publication was from 1991. Avenues for further investigation include a similar search of paid subscription databases and of publications released after the early ‘90s.
In reflecting on the research process and my study results, several points stand out. First, historical research can be fascinating and many times I had to force myself to re-focus on my specific questions. Historical research can also be a tedious and mentally exhausting process; the limitations and inefficiency of the available databases were frustrating and often complicated my investigation. However, I’m incredibly grateful to those who created and maintain the online open-access databases I used, because this study would not have been possible in a single semester without them. Finally, this study puts a current situation into context, helping me (and, hopefully, other researchers) understand some of the possible reasons WNC farmers aren’t planning pollinator conservation on their land. Farmer education about native pollinators is a critical topic with global significance, impacting ecosystem health and food security. I’m excited to end this post by announcing that this research has been accepted for publication in the Graduate Journal of Food Studies.