Agriculture
In agricultural ecosystems, biodiversity is instrumentally important not only for the production of food, but for other ecological services as well, including the recycling of nutrients, regulation of microclimate and local hydrological processes, suppression of undesirable organisms and detoxification of noxious chemicals.
In the United States alone, pollination by bees accounts for over US$9 billion of economic revenue . According to some estimates, over ⅓ of the human diet can be traced directly or indirectly to bee pollination . Losses of key pollinators have been reported in at least one region or country on every continent except Antarctica, which has no pollinators. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that with the global decline in the amount of pollinators, there is not a complete loss of fruit or seeds, but a significant decrease in quantity and viability in fruits, and a lower number of seeds.
Read more about this topic: Insect Biodiversity
Famous quotes containing the word agriculture:
“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)