Executive Summary
As a citizen of California, I have had the privilege of living in a state renowned for its natural beauty. From the Santa Cruz mountains to the farms of Salinas, our state leaves our visitors in awe and graces its inhabitants with a variety of natural resources. Unfortunately, our state’s beauty has been exploited for agricultural practices. I have addressed this group of individuals as I feel you share overlapping responsibilities and must collaborate in order to ensure that the family of Apis, honey bees, will not further decline in numbers within California. As depicted in table 1, California has experienced an average total colony loss of 43.5% the past several years using information from the Bee Informed Partnership website. This has almost reached an alarming rate of 50%. Action must be taken in order to save the bees to ensure that populations will be kept at healthy levels for years to come. Three policy alternatives have been crafted in an attempt to mitigate the issue at hand. This policy referendum goes into the social, economic, and environmental ramifications that each respective policy carries. The three policies are as follows:
Further restricting the use of chlorpyrifos in California
Fines for growers and bee keepers in California without contracts
To merely continue pesticide management along with grower and beekeeper management as currently practice
Problem Statement (as written below): California utilizes an excessive amount of pesticides used for agriculture which degrades the health bees.
Based off of my analysis, the second policy option is most probable as its implementation can easily be put in California’s MP3, and if successful, would offer the most economic gain. Moreover, this policy gives growers and keepers the most autonomy; allowing the people to be civically engaged.
Problem Statement
As species have been expelled from the Earth, too much biodiversity has been lost. Yet, there is one species that mankind and all other species are dependent upon; honey bees of the family Apis. One of the ecosystem services of nature is to provide us with food. Yet, bees in general are in decline, not just the family of Apis (Worland 2017). Therefore, this issue extends beyond California, and is worldwide. Without pollinators, especially honey bees, growing crops is nearly impossible (Potts et al 2010). With the shrinking of bee populations, it is inherent that agriculture will suffer. This is not only detrimental to the well being of humans along with other species, but also affects the economy. In California alone, agriculture generates $47.1 billion, which is approximately 2% of California’s economy (Northern California Water Association 2017). In 2017 the EPA set out pesticide regulations to protect the bees.
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