Have you read my deep dive into the pollination industry yet? I’m still a little mind-blown! Reporting this story was maybe the most fascinating rabbit hole I've been down in a while.
Some key takeaways:
- Roughly a third of food eaten in America needs pollinators.
- Just five or so firms own the vast majority of America's beehives. Talk about vulnerability!
- These bees wouldn't survive without corporate management, which is why there's a booming pollination industry today.
- A lot of bees are still dying: 40% of managed beehives died last year and beekeepers are freaking out about mortality rates increasing.
- Native pollinators are pretty much gone.
- The first honeybees arrived in Virginia’s Jamestown colony in 1622.
- The British used them to cross-pollinate the fruits and vegetables they brought with them.
- America's farming relies on European honeybees to grow crops from abroad.
Lot’s more to learn, and I’d love to hear what you think.
I’ll leave you with a free idea, for a study to be commissioned: I was surprised to find out one way these honeybees are managed is by storing the hives for roughly three months every year in temperature—and humidity—controlled warehouses, sometimes described in the industry as “cold storage.” Plus, when the hives are moved around the country, the trucks are insulated and often heat-regulated, too. Experts say the cool temperatures keep disease and other threats at bay. But through several weeks of research, I couldn’t find a single study (peer-reviewed or otherwise) that addresses how much energy is used to keep the bees alive. I’d love to better understand more about these hidden costs of the pollination industry. Reach out if you look into this!
I’m wishing you all a relaxing long weekend!
— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer
Order my book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, out now from Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books.
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What’s Fresh
Inside A Billionaire Bee Colony. Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s Wonderful Co. is among a handful of honey bee farms responsible for the pollination of a third of Americans’ food. But the real buzz is how they rent them out. By Yours Truly.
Pick Your Poison: How This Fearless Fund Beats The Market. Marshfield Associates holds its stocks through E. coli outbreaks, weather emergencies and other economic disruptions. And it’s outperformed the S&P 500 for nearly a decade, reports Hank Tucker.
This Generation Won’t End Factory Farming – But The Next One Might .As Brian Kateman writes, Raising animals for food is a top contributor to climate change, air and water pollution, and biodiversity loss, so more and more young people are changing what they eat.
The Food-Flavored Inflation Hedge. Teucrium offers unusual ETFs that make futures bets on corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat, writes Bill Baldwin.
A few weeks ago, I was down in D.C. for a talk about my book, Raw Deal, and made a point to hit chef Kevin Tien’s Moon Rabbit. The restaurant, from one of my longtime favorite chefs, did not hold back, while the dishes brought a narrative of Tien’s childhood growing up as a Vietnamese-American in Louisiana to the table. There was five spice foie mousse with tamarind and onion jam, alongside bone marrow, crawfish pasta and fried catfish.
That’s why it was particularly disappointing to see this week in the Washington Post that the restaurant was suddenly shuttering. The staff was attempting to unionize and the Intercontinental Hotel on the Southwest D.C. waterfront decided to close the entire operation down. The staff, Tien and the personal story behind Moon Rabbit’s plates deserved a lot better. I’ll look forward to eating Tien’s next dishes, wherever they are served.
Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer on the enterprise team at Forbes. Her book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, published on December 6, 2022, with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Her nearly nine years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California’s Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France.
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