Editor’s Desk: Buzzkill episode 6 — a glimpse of a post-pollinator world
By Theodore Ross
Today marks the release of the sixth and final installment of Buzzkill, FERN’s podcast series on the pollinator crisis. “A Post-Pollinator World,” which was reported by Buzzkill host and FERN staffer Teresa Cotsirilos, travels to California for the “Super Bowl of Beekeeping.” Each year, beekeepers from across the country load an estimated 90 percent of the nation’s honeybees into trucks and haul them to the Central Valley to pollinate the almond crop.
The Central Valley is one of the world’s agricultural powerhouses, and its almond orchards alone generate more than $70 million per year. But the average California almond farmer is also “living in a Blade Runner, post-nature world,” says one commentator.
Here, in the Golden State, we see what happens if native and domesticated bee species collapse. Today, there is such a shortage of bees available for pollination in this part of California that people are literally stealing beehives. The Central Valley’s industrialized agriculture presents a sort of case study in what the world would be like if we truly lost our pollinator populations, because it’s happening right there, right now. Or, as Teresa says in the episode, “Agricultural industries that eliminate biodiversity are asking for trouble. Tipping points do exist, and we’re playing with fire.”
With the full series now available, it’s worth thinking a bit about why FERN chose this path to report on biodiversity and pollinators. The subject matter is, of course, squarely within the nature of our mission. But the format — longform, narrative, reported audio journalism — is relatively new for us. Buzzkill is FERN’s second podcast series, and it is part of a major investment we are making in audio journalism, through partnerships such as Ted Genoways’ recent episode of Reveal, “Immigrants on the Line,” and our independent audio platform, REAP/SOW.
We are continuing the text-based journalism that FERN is known for, in longform, argument-based, special series, and much more. I’ll write more about the broader scope of what we’re doing at FERN on different occasions. But for today, I’ll keep the focus on our audio projects, which we consider part of our core mission to support a media ecosystem that is under threat in many ways. At FERN, we like to talk about “filling the gaps” in coverage that we care about, and those gaps exist in audio perhaps even more than text.
So, if there’s reporting on food and the environment that needs doing and isn’t getting done, expect to find FERN there making a difference. And you, as one of our supporters, can join us by making a donation, which I hope you will consider doing.