Follow-up onderzoek wilde bestuivers (t2) (BO-11-020-003, BO-11-011.01-041, BO-11-011.01-011)

People and society benefit from the conservation of biodiversity because of the ecosystem services it delivers. So far, the relevance and economic importance of ecosystem services has mainly been developed conceptually or qualitatively. Particularly in the Netherlands, hardly anything is known of the quantitative relationship between the occurrence of wild species and the services they deliver. This lack of tangible evidence of the benefits of ecosystem services threatens to undermine the concept.
Crop pollination by wild insects such as bees and hoverflies is a very illustrative example of ecosystem services, and an example that is relatively easy to quantify. In 2013 and 2014 we therefore conducted a study in which we quantified the agronomic and economic contribution of wild pollinators to the production of apple and blueberry, in order to provide a proof of concept of the economic importance of ecosystem services, and thereby biodiversity, to society. The economic importance of (wild) pollinators turned out to be large with respect to the production of both apples and blueberries. Yet, this importance may well be different for other crops, because the community of pollinators, the ability of the crop to self-fertilize, the production conditions and the cost-benefit relations at the farm level may all vary. In 2015, we therefore continue this line of research by quantifying the role of (wild) pollinators in the production of pears and strawberries, the second and third most important fruit crops in the Netherlands (after apple) in terms of production area.