Food available through the Farm Shop exists due to a common but critical service provided by nature—pollination. This complex act—performed daily by insects, wind or birds transferring pollen from one flower’s stamen to another’s pistil—is truly an amazing relationship, one that has evolved over millions of years.

The workhorse of pollination is the bee, both wild and domesticated. Bees’ bodies are built to gather and haul pollen which helps feed the colony as well as provide plant fertilization. At least forty percent of agricultural crops depend on bees for pollination. A single watermelon, for example, requires a thousand grains of pollen to be deposited for it to grow to full size.

Increasingly over the last century, agriculture has come to rely on managed bees to provide pollination. However, since the 1950s domesticated honey bees have been in decline as detailed in Rowan Jacobson’s engrossing 2008 book, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agriculture Crisis. In some extreme cases, wild or domestic pollinators can no longer get the job done, necessitating labor-intensive pollination by human hands such as pears in Sichuan, China and vanilla beans in Mexico.

Recent research by Claire Kremen, a UC Berkeley professor, documents the valuable role played by wild bees. She has found that native pollinators alone can pollinate crops such as watermelon and that these populations are most abundant in farming areas adjacent to natural habitat. Her research confirms that native pollinators are thriving here in the Capay Valley. Many farms encourage natural habitat by planting diverse hedgerows of native plants—grasses, groundcovers, shrubs, and trees—designed to provide, among other benefits, a year-round supply of nectar for wild pollinators, particularly important during winter when many farm fields lie dormant.

Wildlands turn out to be a boon for family farms for the pollination services conveyed through native pollinators. Fortunately for the family farms in the Capay Valley, where Dr. Kremen conducted much of her research, we are a fertile agricultural valley surrounded by productive wildlands.