6. March 1st, 2013 : “Le déclin des insectes pollinisateurs menace les rendements agricoles”
This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article “Le déclin des insectes pollinisateurs menace les rendements agricoles”. All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
If we often talk about the decline of honey bees, it is wild insects that are the main pollinators.
A study by Bernard Vaissière (INRA), “[one of the best specialists in the subject]”, shows that the flowers visited by honey bees have a fruit productivity 14% higher, while those visited by wild insects have a productivity “[close to twice as much]”. It was based on data “[collected by some fifty international researchers on the pollination of 41 types of crops […] spread over the five continents]”.
This study is “major” according to Jason Tylianakis, in a commentary published by Science.
Nevertheless, they are disappearing quickly: according to a study by Laura Burkle published by Science, “the diversity of wild pollinator species has been halved in 120 years” and “the rate of visits of a small flower endemic to this region of North America has been divided by four during this period. “
The author concludes by recalling the proposed suspension of the 3 NNIs mentioned above and the shortcomings of the certification tests, which, in addition to the criticisms already mentioned, also do not assess the risks on wild pollinators.