posted on 2021-08-10, 20:23authored byPedro J. Bergamo, Marina Wolowski, Leandro R. Tambosi, Edenise Garcia, Kayna Agostini, Lucas A. Garibaldi, Tiffany M. Knight, Eimear Nic Lughadha, Paulo E. A. M. Oliveira, Marcia C. M. Marques, Pietro K. Maruyama, Márcia
M. Maués, Alberto K. Oppata, André R. Rech, Antônio
M. Saraiva, Felipe D. S. Silva, Gizele Sousa, Rodrigo Y. Tsukahara, Isabela G. Varassin, Blandina F. Viana, Leandro Freitas
Crop
pollination is one of Nature’s Contributions to People
(NCP) that reconciles biodiversity conservation and agricultural production.
NCP benefits vary across space, including among distinct political-administrative
levels within nations. Moreover, initiatives to restore ecosystems
may enhance NCP provision, such as crop pollination delivered by native
pollinators. We mapped crop pollination demand (PD), diversity of
pollinator-dependent crops, and vegetation deficit (VD) (vis-a-vis
Brazilian legal requirements) across all 5570 municipalities in Brazil.
Pollinator-dependent crops represented ∼55% of the annual monetary
value of agricultural production and ∼15% of the annual crop
production. Municipalities with greater crop PD (i.e., higher degree
of pollinator dependence of crop production) also had greater VD,
associated with large properties and monocultures. In contrast, municipalities
with a greater diversity of pollinator-dependent crops and predominantly
small properties presented a smaller VD. Our results support that
ecological restoration prompted by legal requirements offers great
potential to promote crop productivity in larger properties. Moreover,
conservation of vegetation remnants could support food security in
small properties. We provided the first steps to identify spatial
patterns linking biodiversity conservation and pollination service.
Using Brazilian legal requirements as an example, we show that land-use
management policies may be successfully used to ensure agricultural
sustainability and crop production.