Pollination is crucial for seed and fruit production. An estimated 90% of flowering plants in the wild and 75% of the world’s food supply depend on pollination to be successful. Pollinators, such as bees, are vital to the world’s food security and overall environmental health. The rapid decline in the bee population poses a serious threat to a wide variety of plants that are crucial to human well-being and livelihoods.

Cavendish Farms partnered with the Bedeque Bay Environmental Management Association (BBEMA) in 2018 to explore opportunities to create pollinator habitats on Cavendish Farms’ farmland. They worked with Dr. Nancy MacLean, Associate Dean in the Department of Plant, Food, and Environmental Sciences at Dalhousie University, to evaluate a complex mix of clovers and flowering plants that ideally support native bees. The project was expanded this year and successfully introduced pollinator plots to additional contracted farms.

Native bees feed on flowering plants grown in a Cavendish Farms’ field plot.

“Cavendish Farms works hard at improving our environmental footprint, both in our operations in the processing plants and in the farms that grow the potatoes that feed us,” said John MacQuarrie, Director, Environmental Sustainability. “Cavendish Farms allocated areas of farmland to test habitats for pollinators, it’s just one piece of our sustainability agenda.”

Bee decline has many causes, including decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping practices and loss of habitat. Cavendish Farms can help to mitigate this decline by providing PEI bees with a sustainable habitat.