A recent article by JRC scientists published in the journal Land has mapped and assessed the pollination potential for food crops at European scale. This helps estimate the contribution of wild pollinator insects to crop production and identify landscape areas in Europe with a deficit in potential pollination. Assessing large-scale patterns of the availability of pollination services and identifying potential mismatches with the demand of agricultural crops could be used in EU and national agricultural and biodiversity policies.Insect pollination is necessary for up to 75% of global crops that are used as human food, and for 84% of European cultivated crop species. JRC scientists from the Institute for Environment and Sustainability developed an index of relative pollination potential (RPP), which is defined as the relative capacity of ecosystems to support crop pollination. For this, they applied data on European land cover, land use, and climate to the RPP index model and linked this to regional crop production statistics. RPP is found to be higher in warmer areas with high nesting suitability that offer abundant foraging resources such as nectar-carrying plants and flowers.
The article concluded that the yield of food crops pollinated by insects, such as wild bees, could fall by 25-32% if such pollination were no longer available. This finding strengthens the argument that biodiversity and ecosystem services are crucial to food security and human welfare, and must be protected.
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